Satis
by Eiserne
Summary: Integra dies, only to wake up in the past, as a fifteen-year-old. AxI.
1. parting words

Disclaimer.

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 **00.**

 **parting words**

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 _Death, be not proud, though some have called thee_

 _Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;_

 _For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow_

 _Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me._

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Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing woke up knowing this would be the last morning she would ever do so.

She could feel it in her bones. She was a woman, an old woman, and her intuition had always been topnotch. She knew with absolute certainty that this cloying feeling of fathomless tiredness was not simply because she had overdone herself in the fencing match four days prior.

A sliver of the sun slid between the closed curtains and cast itself across her sheets. The dust sparkled. She could hear birds chirping. My, what a mundane day to die.

"Rise and shine, Master Integra, it's a lovely new day! Rise and—oh! You're already up!" Seras Victoria waltzed into the bedroom, balancing a tray of breakfast and her daily medicine on one hand. She was blonde and pale and bouncy, as she had been every day without fail for the past thirty years. She smiled sunnily at her boss. "And how is my favorite director of Hellsing feeling this morning?"

"I'm your only director of Hellsing," Integra pointed out. "And I feel like today is going to be the day."

The tray rattled, just a little bit. Seras hummed and set it down on the table. She made herself busy pulling the curtains open. Light, obnoxiously bright, streamed into the spartan room.

"I'm not joking, Seras."

The curtains snagged, just a little bit. Seras kept on humming. She tied the strings in a neat little bow. She moved on to the next window.

"I'm going to die."

The curtains ripped in half.

Integra stared. "Seras!"

"Oh, oh God, I'm so sorry, I'm—" Seras swiveled around. "Actually, I'm not." Her eyes were wide and her hands were trembling. "Don't say such things! If this is payback for my teasing your wrinkles the other day, you've already gotten yours with all the pinching. My cheeks still hurt. See?" She pointed at her flawless skin.

"And you need to get your head out of the sand," Integra snapped. "Surely you must feel it as well. Today's the day, Seras. I'm going to die."

Seras hummed louder and poured water into a cup. It slopped over the rim. "Just eat your breakfast and don't forget your medicine. All this talk about dying." She snorted. "This is the year 2030. Life expectancy is somewhere up in the eighties or nineties and you're only fifty-two." She wagged a finger at Integra. "You still have another thirty years of me to endure, so buckle up, Sir Hellsing."

"I'm pretty sure people surviving to their nineties didn't have cancer, Seras," Integra said dryly.

The Draculina's humming grew into such volume that she might as well be leading a performance. As it were, the melody was an off-key rendition of some old musical number. Defying Gravity, she thought it was. Seras had been a big fan of _Wicked_. "I can't wait until Master comes back and I tell him that our mighty Sir Integral Hellsing was intimidated by a little sickness."

"A little sickness called cancer, Seras." Integra reprimanded. She ignored the reference to _him_. "Which I have been succumbing to bit by bit for the past year, despite appearances. Don't be crude."

"Don't be cruel, then! And don't forget your medicine!" Seras said shrilly, picking up the destroyed curtains and storming out.

"Seras!" Integra called. She huffed. "Damn girl."

She combed a hand through her hair in frustration, then got up. There was a sudden bout of dizziness that she had to clutch her knees to weather. She managed to reach the bathroom regardless. Integra splashed cold water on herself and studied herself in the mirror.

She certainly did not look like a dying old woman. Her one blue eye may be a shade duller than the brilliant diamond it had been when she was young, and her hair lighter, almost white. Yet her mind, her senses remained as sharp as ever. She could even win a fencing match. Ah, the wonders of modern medicine.

It had been, as she said, all appearances. Careful, deliberate measures taken to keep the Convention, the Vatican, and the vultures vying for her assets at bay. Her illness had been under the tightest of wraps. Only Seras and the family doctor were privy to her true state of health. How far gone she was.

Integra sighed. _Seras._

xx

Seras lingered outside the bedroom for a while, her mouth pressed into a thin line, her shadow arm twisting the curtains. Her hand was unable to let go of the doorknob.

"Good morning, Miss Victoria!" one of the staff greeted, passing by.

She looked out the window.

It was. It was a good morning. A beautiful morning. And nothing bad was going to happen. Absolutely nothing.

"Yes, good morning," Seras replied.

Absolutely nothing.

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Integra did eat her breakfast, and did not forget her medicine. Though she knew the pills in her hand were now pointless, she welcomed the few hours of painlessness they would grant. For exactly an hour she stayed in her room, going over papers, finalizing a few details she had left hanging for this particular occasion, and sealing them. Then she took off on a tour of her own house.

Good old Hellsing Manor. A building of heritage, honor, duty, blood, nightmares, monsters, and death.

A beautiful mausoleum.

She crossed the hall of portraits, feeling their painted eyes on her and not meeting any of them. Judgmental coots.

She did, however, stop at her father's portrait.

"It seems I'll soon be seeing you," she told him.

Arthur Hellsing had no reply, and she did not expect one. It was hard to tell whether her father would be proud of all that she had done. Frankly, she no longer cared.

It was the fate of all Hellsings to die early. The workload, the stress, the nicotine indulged to deal with the stress—it was a repeating cycle with a clear exit. She had quit her cigars a decade ago, but the damage had already been done. She did not regret the habit. Most of time it had been the only thing keeping her sane.

Then again...

Integra resumed walking.

Seras... Seras was in denial. Integra had thought she had shed that aspect of hers, yet apparently it had been merely dormant. Unsurprising. She was a bloody vampire. Vampires never seemed to grow up. No matter what age they had been when they were turned, no matter what age they existed to be, they could be all such children.

 _"Don't be too harsh on her, boss."_

Integra growled. "Not you too, Bernadotte. Can't a lady walk in her own house in peace?"

The disembodied voice of Pip Bernadotte chuckled. _"Technically I_ am _your house."_

"Don't bloody remind me," she grumbled. "What do you want?"

 _"Just what I told you. Don't be too harsh on Mignonette. You know how she is. Seras—she's not going to take your death lightly. Whether today or in another thirty years. She's never taken anyone's death lightly and never will."_

"Well then, she needs to learn, doesn't she? She has a lifetime full of deaths before her," Integra said, in an unflattering bout of nastiness.

 _"That's cruel, coming from you, boss."_

Integra stopped. She closed her eye momentarily.

 _"When you're gone, she'll be left all alone."_

"She has you," Integra whispered. "She has...him. He's coming back, she said."

Her heart panged at the mention of him.

 _"Don't kid yourself,"_ Pip said sharply. _"She respects him, sure, and she misses him like hell, but their relationship is not even close to the one you have with her. Come on."_ The walls rippled. _"You're the last and the greatest. You guys have been with each other for thirty years. I worry for her. There's only so much I can do. She doesn't look it, but she opens her heart very rarely, you know? And when she does she lets people in too deeply."_

She laughed hollowly. "Sounds familiar."

 _"It should. It's you."_

She faltered.

"I see those romance novels of hers have addled both of your brains. I have never known love, Captain Bernadotte."

 _"The hell you haven't. You love so much that you don't know what to do with it. You loved your father so much that you sacrificed your whole life for his legacy. You loved your butler so much that you forgave him even after he betrayed you for a Nazi crackbrain. You love Seras so much that, even now, you're making plans upon plans on how to prepare her."_ Pip's voice grew quiet. _"And you love that man so much, that you're still waiting for him, even after thirty years."_

"Love?" Integra laughed. "Love? What you're calling love, Bernadotte, is called duty, senility, foresight and utter nonsense. Love?" she repeated, ignoring the way her heart contracted, the heat behind her eye, the trembling of her hands, the inaudible sob in her breath. "The day I admit myself of being in love, Bernadotte, is my funeral."

 _"Which according to you is today, right?"_

"Get out!" She kicked the wall. "Go bother someone else with your blathering."

 _"Who's the one in denial, now?"_ Pip quipped, and she kicked again. _"Merde! Fine, fine. But you forget I've known you for thirty years as well, Integra. You can't fool me or Mignonette."_

"OUT!"

 _"Stubborn old lady."_

Finally, the halls were quiet.

She covered her ears, as if the silence hurt.

At length Integra lowered her hands and started to walk again, Pip's words ringing in her mind.

Her steps fell bittersweet, for each of them brought to surface those who had breathed their last on these polished floors. It was a truth that not even time could erase, and she bowed her head in memoriam.

She was not really aware of where she was going.

But when she reached it, she crossed her arms. "Figures."

The entrance to the dungeons.

Integra narrowed her eye at the walls in suspicion, half-convinced Pip had somehow altered the corridors so as to lead her there. But she relented. She took a tentative step forward, and then another, until she was making the arduous journey down the stairwell. The cool, stale and, if she concentrated hard enough, coppery air seemed to usher her in front of the heavily warded door.

She stared it for a while. She raised a hand to the metal.

"...Count?"

There was no answer. As had been for the past thirty years.

She wrenched away.

Integra let out a strangled laugh. Hopeful after thirty years. When had she become such a romantic? This was Seras' fault. She would sing "just a little while longer" and forcefully fan a flame that would and should have burnt out long since otherwise. Integra turned on her heel. "Pathetic. I've better things to do than loiter around here."

It was then her body decided to give out.

She could not make a sound. She grabbed her chest and dropped to her knees.

The walls undulated. _"Boss? Boss! Fucking hell. Mignonette!"_

"Integra." Seras was instantly at her side, shoving pills and water down her throat. "Integra! Oh..." She cradled the older woman in her arms. "It's—it's going to be okay. You'll be fine. I won't let you die, I won't! Let's get you to bed." She stood up. "Everything's going to be fine."

Integra was losing consciousness.

"Everything's going to be fine," Seras was repeating to herself. "Everything."

 _Oh, Seras._

They phased through the ceilings, leaving the locked room with the empty coffin behind.

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Death is the endgame of all beings, and those who proclaim themselves immortal are mere escapists; running, running, as behind them the hooded figure walks, sharpening his scythe. For she had been a knight who had accompanied Death in the entire course of her life, Integra only felt as though she was retiring after a great wearisome day. She fancied herself at once cold and warm. She thought she smelled daisies.

When she woke up, it was sunset. The dying rays of the sun were flooding her bedroom a deep and tragic scarlet. Her hand was being held between the small, chilly ones of Seras, whose cheeks were streaked with dried tears.

"Integra!" Seras leaned down. A fresh bout of tears spilled from her red eyes, that ever familiar color. "Oh, Master Integra. You had me so worried."

"Seras..." Integra tugged her hand out of her grasp, to raise it to her face. She cupped the girl's cheek. "Silly minx. Why the tears?"

Seras clutched at the hand that was thumbing away the unrelenting tears of blood.

"You knew this would happen, eventually."

Seras shook her head. "Not this soon! You were doing so well. We all thought you would be able to make it."

"I have always known it was inevitable," Integra said.

"It doesn't have to," Seras said quickly. "It doesn't have to be inevitable. I—I can drink your blood. I can—"

"And I told you, not to joke about that."

"I'm not joking!" Seras cried.

Integra placed her other hand on Seras' face, cupping her fully, the blood staining her palms. "And you're not that cruel or stupid. It has been my destiny, Seras, always my destiny, to die as a Hellsing—as a human."

"But—but—" She was crying harder now. "You haven't even seen Master. And I've never lied to you about that, ever. He's going to come back! He will! You won't even give him the chance to say goodbye?"

His face flashed in her mind, that beautiful and terrible mask of red and black and white.

"Alucard knows better than I that all things come to an end. Everything. Even family, Seras." Integra took a fortifying breath. "I can admit now, that I loved you all, you vampires. And that above all, you were my family. The only family I have ever known." She smiled. "With a little blonde troublemaker—"

Seras laughed despite herself, shakily. "—and her chain-smoking beau—"

"—and her father, the Count—"

"—and his Countess." Seras waited for her to deny it.

Integra did not. But she did avert her eye. Thinking about the could-have-beens was pointless, illogical exercise and filled her with melancholia. "And the doting old butler, I think."

"Oh, yes. We can't leave out Walter." Seras squeezed Integra's hands to her face as if she was intending to never part with them. "If he'd—if we'd just had—" She sobbed. "We were all that. For a very short while before the war, we were, weren't we? Even if no one ever admitted it! And we could have been that still, if we hadn't been so stubborn."

"No, you're wrong." Integra's smile turned sad. "We were too scarred and too destructive. But you, Seras." Her fingertips stroked her cheeks. "I think you were the better person out of us all."

The statement brought on yet another torrent of bloody tears.

"I'm not, I'm really not," Seras babbled. "If it weren't for you I wouldn't be here at all. You're all I have. I can't function without you, please! I'm just like Master. I'm scared that I won't be able to retain my humanity without you. Please, Integra!"

It was the eleventh hour. Integra gently drew back her hands.

"No!" Seras grabbed them and crushed them to her lips. "No, no, no, please! You're all I have. Please. I can't lose you, too! I don't want to be alone again!"

"You are my best friend, my sister, my daughter, my Seras," Integra whispered. "And no parent should outlive their child."

"No."

 _Goodbye._

 _"Boss..."_

 _Goodbye, Pip._

"Please."

 _Goodbye, Seras._

"Mother."

 _Goodbye._

"Mother, mother! Why do you leave me? Why does everyone always leave me?"

 _I'm sorry._

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 _One short sleep past, we wake eternally_

 _And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die._

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NOTES

"Death Be Not Proud," _Holy Sonnets,_ John Donne.

Unlike _Pushing Daisies,_ a happy-go-lucky product of a recent caffeine binge, this has been sitting in my computer for a long, long while, and I've decided to publish it today because it's Mother's Day (Parent's Day where I live).

This entire chapter resulted from my appreciation of Integra and Seras' relationship, which I always felt was portrayed quite profoundly in canon (Manga/OVA). Integra accepts Seras, takes her in, embraces her during her bloodlust, cuts her finger to feed her, and orders her not to die. Though this is intended to be, ultimately, an AxI fic, Integra and Seras' relationship will be an almost equally important pillar of the plot.

I must stress that this takes second priority to _Snow White_ and will be updated only irregularly, if at all, until SW is completed. Which won't be long, I don't know. Headaches are rampant these days. Your responses will be the most welcome and beloved of all energizers. Especially since this is going to be a rather depressing and dramatic ride. I would love to hear what you thought. What will await our favorite Hellsing director, do you think?


	2. auld lang syne

— _ **ther!**_

Was she dreaming?

 _ **Mother!**_

Dark. It was dark and cold and there was something wet on her hands.

 _Blood_ , she thought.

There was someone crying, sounding so broken. She wanted to go to her and hold her, but could not move. She could not see anything, could not feel anything, except her hands stained with blood. She imagined them outstretched before her.

 _ **Don't leave me!**_

Had she not spoken those words, once upon a time?

 _ **Don't leave me!**_

Yes, she had.

And yet, he had disappeared.

And yet, he had left her.

Things precious to her seemed to fall through the spaces between her fingers like sand, yet like blood they left stains. They. The few precious people. They told her they would never leave her and she believed them, trusted them, even in her life where misplaced trust was a paved road to ruin. She carved their names into her heart and carved them deep. If prodded, they would bleed.

Turns out, she did misplace her trust.

Turns out, they did more than just bleed. They _trampled_.

But she put aside those things. She put aside her mangled heart and stood tall because that was what she did. That was what she _was_. _Integrity_. One who stood stalwart and true no matter what. _No matter what_. The Iron Maiden, sweeping aside fragments with her impenetrable iron hands, dusting them dispassionately, and moving on. And so she spent three decades of her life cleaning up stain after stain that would never truly fade and brushing aside shards after shards that would ever sting under the skin.

"All in the course of duty," she would say, her lips curved but not smiling.

As she did, dust gathered inside the house she had once been so proud of. She lived in a glorified mausoleum haunted by long dead men. She traversed from room to room as their keeper, not quite allowing herself to wonder about the could-have-beens yet not quite barring herself from it either. When she passed by a certain door, she would think, _Is this what you felt when you were alone in your castle, Count? Or did you not feel at all?_

The image that came to her mind, black and white and grey and dull red, had no answer.

Farewell, he said instead.

Gluttonous wretch. How dare you. How dare you leave me.

And yet, she was no better. She had said goodbye, too.

 _Seras, Seras, don't cry_. _I'm free at last. Be happy for me. Won't you be happy for me?_

Contrary to her words, her heart grew heavier. In the abyss she drew her bloodstained hands to her cheeks and the tears running there washed them pink, though she could not see.

 _Seras, Seras. My darling girl. I loved you most. I loved you best._

She was never one to wallow in regret. But here, in this cold, dark space, her mind and body growing numb, she saw her life kaleidoscopic. She saw the missed chances, the things she never said, the questions she never asked. It was human nature to regret, and the Iron Maiden had only ever been human. The steel walls around her rusted with each of her tears and crumbled with each of Seras' cries.

 _ **Mother, mother!**_

 _Seras, Seras, what can I do? It's too late now._

"Just like Alucard," she whispered. "Late, always late. Too late."

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Is it?

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 **SATIS**

"Its other name was **Satis** ; which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three

—or all one to me—

for **enough**."

\- Estella, _Great Expectations_

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 **01.**

 **auld lang syne**

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Every day for half a century, Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing had risen with the sun. The light that flooded her bedroom assured her of at least twelve hours of meandering until the start of her actual duties, and in its glow she would sit up in bed, stretch her limbs, and stare down at her covered knees as she went over the day's agenda. _Tea at two with Penwood...finalization of the plans for atomized silver by five..._ The faint echo of a dream would briskly be banished. It had no place in her reality.

Yet she was finding it difficult to banish this particular dream.

So...dark. So cold. Were dreams supposed to be so...real? And she could still...hear...

Integra sat up, her hands pressed to her face. Slowly she lowered them, half-expecting to see them red, for certainly they were wet, and clammy. Yet against the white of the bedding, her palms were pristine but for the glistening tracks she had made with her tears.

Oh, how funny. She had cried in her sleep. She must have been truly stressed out yesterday. No wonder. She had talked to Seras about her death. It was a subject that always managed to get Seras upset, which in turn would always manage to get her upset. Pip was right; she had been too harsh on the girl. She would have to apologize.

But...why did the thought of Seras make her hands tremble?

Her hands. Integra found herself studying them closely. Oh, now this was even funnier. Were her tears blurring her vision, or were they oddly...smooth? Seras had presented her a set of expensive creams for her fiftieth birthday, swearing they were, quote, "A safe alternative to vampire blood guaranteed to smooth away all your wrinkle worries!" She had pinched both cheeks for that.

Still, she had applied them every night. Well. Evidently her efforts had paid off. Seras was going to be so pleased when she saw they actually worked. Integra almost smiled.

Almost.

It was strange.

She could not smile.

There was a knock on the door. Seras, of course. The girl waltzed into her room every morning with a customary and obnoxiously cheery greeting, humming a tune off-key, though she had scolded her multiple times she had no need of such infernal racket. Truthfully, after so long, Integra felt like her day did not begin until she heard that hum. Just as well. She would ask Seras if she seemed off today.

The door opened.

"Good morning, Miss Hellsing."

A middle-aged, portly woman walked in.

"Promptly up as usual, my dear!" the woman said, setting the morning paper down on a table and crossing to the windows, missing the way Integra froze. "If only my son was as early a bird as you. Why, last weekend I had to smack his rear to wake him up, and he's twenty-four! I swear, that boy'll be the death of me—"

"Miriam?" Integra breathed.

The woman named Miriam opened a window. She turned to her. "Yes?"

A breeze entered the room, an early summer's wind that swept strands of her hair into her face. Some of them got caught in the salty traces of her tears, and it was right at that moment that Integra realized.

Both of her cheeks were wet.

Both of her _eyes_ were wet.

And one of them had not produced tears for three decades.

"Why, you look as if you've seen a ghost! And my goodness, have you been crying, my dear? What on earth is the matter?"

Integra did not reply. Her left hand reached up, to the eye that should be covered, should _not_ be whole, _should not be seeing_ —

"What is this?" she whispered. "What is going on? Where's Seras?"

"I haven't a clue who you're talking about. Integra, are you alright?"

No. She was _not_ alright. "What have you—" Integra started to demand loudly, only to slap a hand to her throat. Her voice. Why was it—why was it so _high?_

Miriam looked alarmed. "Integra, you're giving me a fright. You seem to be dreadfully out of sorts this morning! Mr. Dornez is supposed to bring tea in a half, but I'll hurry him up, you understand? I'll be right back. Oh, I do hope you're not coming down with something!"

One word registered in her mind.

 _"Dornez?"_ she croaked.

The woman was gone.

Integra dropped her hands to her lap and stared at them anew.

Her hands, her unblemished hands.

Her _soft_ hands. Her _smooth_ hands. Not calloused, not wrinkled. And they were shaking in front of her—

 _Eyes_.

Wavering in their sockets and inarguably _whole_.

A word was uttered, helplessly. "How?"

The syllable, which faded into the air, became a flood in her brain. _How? How? How?_ It reiterated itself over and over and over again until it transformed into a buzz, a white noise that played in crescendo as she moved on autopilot. She did not remember throwing off her sheet, she certainly did not remember landing on her feet, but she was in front of the vanity, gripping the detachable mirror in her too-clean, too-soft, too-smooth hands so tight her knuckles seemed to burst. When she beheld the face gazing back at her from inside the silver circle, the buzz transformed into a _scream_.

Years of restraint prevented that scream from escaping. She could not, however, prevent her muscles from slackening, the mirror from dropping. It met the floor, shattering into many haphazard pieces.

The haze around her mind followed suit. The events of what she had thought was yesterday seized her senses like the claws of death. They scraped her raw, enraged that she had slipped from their clutches, and she remembered. She remembered waking up. She remembered wandering. She remembered collapsing and waking up yet again and Seras was there, begging her not to—

The pieces reflected different parts of herself, but in each and every one she glimpsed a pair of wide and disbelieving blue eyes.

"I died," she said.

The truth rang hollowly in this time and space.

And her left eye, it _throbbed_.

Integra bent down and picked up a shard. She held it in her palm, and deliberately, she closed her fingers. She squeezed. She watched, unflinching, as the edges sliced her skin. Blood oozed, pain streaked up her arm and it was then she let the shard fall, reddened. The sting passed through her body, by her beating heart, by her inflating lungs. And it was telling her, they were all telling her this was—

"Not a dream."

Droplets of crimson dribbled down her nightgown as she repeated the words silently.

Not a dream.

 _Not a dream._

Then what was this?

Integra made her way to the table where the morning paper sat innocently. She did not need her glasses to read the four-digit number printed in the corner in black ink.

 _ **1992.**_

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There had been a Mrs. Miriam A. Bolger in Hellsing from the eighties to the early nineties. She had been employed by Sir Arthur Hellsing as a nanny to his daughter and, not counting the brief period of retirement forced upon her by his brother, she had served for sixteen consecutive years. After taking care to witness her charge blossom into a beautiful, valorous knight, she had chosen to retire for good to Scotland, where she died at the age of seventy-three.

Integra had sent flowers to her funeral.

"How fleeting life is," she had remarked, as she personally placed the order for two dozen lilies.

And now this one particular Mrs. Bolger, who should have been dead for fourteen years, was moving through the manor in search of one particular Mr. Dornez, who should have been dead for thirty. She found him in the kitchen, waiting the approximate eight minutes it took to perfect his lady's tea. He raised a brow when he saw her rush in.

"Is there a problem?"

"It's Integra," Miriam exclaimed, and the man set down his watch. "There's something terribly wrong with her. I went to give her the paper and she was crying. Crying! And she was dreadfully pale and asking odd questions and she looked at me as if I was a ghost! You must go up and check on her!"

The butler was already moving. He climbed the flight of stairs leading to Integra's bedroom, and when he arrived the door was ajar. She was not there. The curtains floated in the wind, guiding his gaze to the opposite side of the room where there was a mess of broken glass and blood.

Miriam caught up to him and gasped. "What happened?"

He rounded on her. "You said she was crying? Was it a nightmare?"

"Why, I'm not sure. But she was asking about a name I'd never heard before. I'm afraid I don't recall what it was other than that it was a rather strange name. Oh dear, I should have been more thorough." Miriam wrung her hands. "Now that I think of it, she looked...devastated. Absolutely devastated."

xx

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1992.

That was thirty-eight years ago. She had been fifteen years old.

She had been a slight thing then, still growing. A little knight-in-training who still wore dresses, who was filling the shoes of director at a painstaking pace. Though by then she had spilled more blood than the average person did in their wildest fantasies, and innocence had become a sweet far utopia, she had still harbored hope, that one day she would do her father proud.

She had been a fool.

Integra, who should have been dead for a night, found herself outside. It was a beautiful day. Blue. Cloudless. Like yesterday—she referred to it as yesterday because the alternative was too ridiculous. She slumped against the grand double doors of the manor, eyes shut and her injured hand splayed across her pounding heart. When the sun filtered through her lids red, she let out a brittle laugh at the sheer evidence of life and utter, blasphemous change it posited as.

"What a cruel, cruel joke."

Why was she even surprised? After all the shit she had experienced, this was merely icing on the fetid cake. Nothing in life had ever gone the way she had anticipated, why should death be any different?

The young girl—the old woman—whatever she was—walked along the outside wall of the manor, her fingers trailing on its heated bricks. Despite their warmth, this house, this bloody miserable godforsaken house, had never felt more like a tomb to her than it did now. There was nothing here. Nothing except dead people. People she had long since bade goodbye, people she had buried with her own two hands. She could almost hear them.

 _"Integra!"_ they called.

She paused. That had not been her imagination. Someone was actually calling her.

 _"Integra!"_

Integra opened her eyes a sliver and sucked in a breath. She remembered that tone. It was Miriam. She must be looking for her. That meant—

 _"Integra!"_ another voice called, male and elderly.

Her chest heaved. She squeezed her eyes back shut.

 _Walter. I buried you. I buried you with my own two hands._

She covered her ears. This was too much. It was why she had fled from her room. Details had leapt out at her with each passing second: the vase she had removed twenty years ago, the canopy she had dismantled when she was eighteen, the picture that was not there that she had received on her forty-fifth Christmas! God, she had _died!_ She had died just yesterday! And she was bloody tired and bloody done with this shit. Whatever she was, whatever this was, dead or alive, heaven or hell, thirty-eight years in the past or thirty-eight years in the future, she wanted to get away from it all.

Sir Integral Hellsing did not run, but there had been no Sir Integral Hellsing thirty-eight years ago in the year 1992. There had only been a young Miss Hellsing.

 _"Integra!"_

"Shut the fuck up," she muttered. "Why can't this world go on without me for one bloody day?"

A voice piped up inside her head. It sounded like Seras.

 _You have to face them sooner or later._

She turned the east corner to the back of the manor, and there she slid down the wall to the grass.

"Seras," she said.

The shadows did not answer.

"Pip."

The walls did not answer.

She shuddered. Of course. Thirty-eight years ago there had been no Pip Bernadotte who swore in French who smoked cheap cigarettes who gave her unwelcome love advice who kept vigil over her domain and would never ignore...thirty-eight years ago there had been no Seras Victoria who hummed who teased who adored _Wicked_ (and thirty-eight years ago there had been no such musical) who stayed up at day without complaint. Who had mended her mangled heart to the best of her ability, who had been the last person Integra had allowed herself to love.

Always, always, things precious to her fell through the spaces between her fingers like sand. They told her they would never leave her yet they did.

But this time she could not blame them because this time, it was she who had left.

And now, there was nothing. Nothing, except...

A butler...

 _(A traitor.)_

And...

"Why here?" Her nails scratched the fabric of her dress. "What am I supposed to do here? What's left for me here?"

 _You know what is._

Integra tilted her head toward the sun. Its glare momentarily blinded her.

"That can't be," she said.

 _Don't deny it. Especially not this time._

"This time..."

 _Is your second chance_.

Are you ready?

It had been so long, she almost did not recognize the sensation for what it was.

But only one entity could produce this kind of pressure, this prickly feeling, this fleeting sensation of being submerged neck-deep in a pool of ink. Had she been looking, she would have seen the shadows under the trees in front of her twist, and emerge as a very tall, massive figure. Presently, however, she thought she would rather enjoy the sun. Her lashes rested on her tan cheeks and she mused, belatedly, that regardless of everything, she was glad to have her left eye back.

It was quiet for a brief, golden while.

Then—

"You've caused quite a commotion."

Footsteps.

She counted them. _One, two, three_. A shadow was cast over her.

"Master."

She breathed, or she tried. Her lashes fluttered, and she noticed that the afterimage of the sun had faded.

Finally, she lowered her gaze.

Red.

Such a violent color. Yet beautiful. It was—it should be—vibrant. Even when her life had been drenched in it. The color that wetted her palm, peppered her dress, the color that stood before her.

Integra said nothing. She simply stared. She could believe that she had died and somehow missed heaven and hell altogether and ended up thirty-eight years in the past, and she could believe that this was somehow a second chance wrapped as a big _fuck you_ from the universe. But this, she could not quite believe.

Thus she continued to stare and did so thirstily.

Her vampire had always been very beautiful.

 _So that's how it is._

He smiled. "Did you have a nightmare, my Master?"

 _If you can't come to me..._

 _I'll come to you._

She smiled, too.

"Haven't you heard, Count? There is no nightmare from which you do not wake."

xx

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* * *

NOTES

Here we go, off on another journey.

Thank you all for your feedback and sorry I kept you waiting! I hope you enjoyed this, and I would passionately love to hear what you thought and what you anticipate.


	3. palimpsest

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 **02.**

 **palimpsest**

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His lips twisted.

"None, indeed."

Integra settled comfortably against the bricks of the manor, bending her legs to the side. The grass stirred.

The pale lips smoothed. "Count," he repeated. His smile became more pronounced. "You rarely call me by that."

Her own smile had become fixed, a shallow curve and nothing more, on her face as she stared and stared at the man—the Count—the monster, _her_ monster—in front of her, whose coat was a mere few feet away from the hem of her nightgown. It was rippling in the breeze, waves of crimson threatening to drench her. Ah, but she had already done that herself, had she not? Her palm was resting listlessly on her lap, trickling red.

His eyes, just as red and glowing, glanced at the cut and back at hers. "You seem to have hurt yourself, my Master."

That voice. That voice which she had heard only in her darkest dreams for thirty years. Those words. _My Master_. Only he could say it with an undercurrent of _something else_. This was real. This was happening. In broad daylight, before her very _eyes_.

"A flesh wound," she sighed.

"Allow me to tend to it." He took a step forward. "And after I have closed it, perhaps you'll further allow me to partake in the details of your dream. For as you have said, there is no nightmare from which one does not wake; yet here you are, my Master, fettered still by whatever phantasm it was that besieged you."

She could have laughed. He was one to talk about being fettered by dreams.

"Oh? How then, will you unfetter me?" Integra asked mockingly. "Will you be vanquishing my phantasmagoria with your sheer presence? A demon to chase away my other demons?"

He simpered. "I only seek to attend to you to the best of my ability."

 _Then where were you ten years ago, twenty years ago? Where were you, when I needed you the most?_

Her heart contracted. Her smile disappeared altogether. Suddenly she found his presence not liberating but suffocating. He stood there, unchanged, same as always, knowing nothing of what had occurred, knowing nothing of what was to come. He was the personification of her new reality, and the weight of it dragged her soul down to impossible depths. Integra inhaled until her lungs rattled. She shifted her gaze to the trees behind him as a dismissal. "You should be sleeping."

"How could I, with the Angel of Death and the nosy housekeeper making all that racket? It's unlike you to keep them worried."

"Make yourself useful and go tell them I'm perfectly fine."

"That'll work," he scoffed. "He's already half-convinced that I had a hand in whatever has gotten you into this state. He'll behead me as soon as I appear."

"Get yourself beheaded, then," Integra said, unmoved.

He tilted the head in question. His look was piercing. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're displeased with me."

"Astute of you." Her sight, clearer now with glasses, was centered on the green foliage swaying in the wind. It was strange, having depth perception again. His form loomed in the peripheral vision she had lived so long without, a mass of red and black and white. All her remaining senses were acutely aware of him taking another step forward. The rustle of his coat. The chill of his aura. And, if she concentrated hard enough, the copper of his scent.

"I can't imagine why. Haven't I been a very good pet this past week?" He took yet another step.

Integra closed her eyes. "Go away."

"You don't mean that."

He was always so aggravating. Always so difficult. Her vampire. Her servant. Her Count.

Her _Alucard_.

And because he was Alucard, he was crouching before her in an instant, and white turned to red and summer turned to winter. Heavy fabric draped over her knees. His chill battered against her warmth. His pallor was inches from hers, forcing her to open her eyes and glare at him. He seemed instead fascinated by the traces of her tears.

"I've not seen you cry since you were twelve," he murmured.

"Back. Off."

Alucard leaned back, but only slightly. He regarded her with suspicion. "You're different this morning. Subtly. I can't quite place it. You look…" One of his gloved hands hovered near her left cheek. "...as if someone has done you a great wrong. Surely, that can't have been me?"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Integra said. "You have the ability to aggravate me even when you're doing nothing."

He barked out a raucous laugh. "Is that so, my Master! But even if that is so..." A finger landed tentatively on a dried tear. It was cold and it burned. "You will allow me a chance to make up for it, won't you? Integra."

 _Integra_.

His voice. The way he spoke her name.

 _No, this is farewell, Integra._

 _Farewell, farewell, farewell. Integra, Integra, Integra._

It was involuntary. It was illogical. Yet she had to act. She had to reach out. She had to feel for herself, to let her touch burn him as his did her. With her unblemished hand she cupped his cheek.

He stiffened. He had not been anticipating this. His finger dropped and his eyes widened. They roamed wildly over her face, searching for the catch, but her touch was tender.

She was looking at him not as a young girl who had woken up from a deathly dream, but as an old woman who had been reunited with her long lost lover, though they had never been lovers in the strictest sense of the word. Yet there had been glances. Nuances. And very fleetingly, touches, those nothings that seemed to promise everything. They had all, despite his cold flesh, carried heat—heat she could not afford, for she was the Iron Maiden and iron melts when heated. So she had kept her distance, he had kept his distance, until it was too late, until the distance had stretched into an irreconcilable expanse of time and space.

 _I had been prepared to never see you again._

She had said goodbye to him, when she had ventured down the stairwell to the sealed door. You were too late, Count. You won't be able to see me. When you return it will be me that's a slab of concrete on the ground. Be good to Seras, she's a better person than any of us. Goodbye. Goodbye.

 _Yet here I am. And here you are_.

"You're," Integra whispered, "here."

Alucard smiled quizzically, even helplessly. "You don't sound disappointed."

"You—" She sighed. "You're so infuriating. You're insufferable. You've made me—" She stopped.

"Made you what?" he urged.

She swept her small fingers against his skin once, twice.

"You're always the same. You never change."

"Of course," he replied, somewhat hoarsely. "I am that kind of monster."

At last Integra smiled, and it was a smile the vampire had never before witnessed on her face nor directed toward him. It was the smile of an old soul, who had battled through the fires of life, to find him on the other side. She looked as if she had _wanted_ to see him there, and surely, surely, he was mistaken. _What a curious expression to wear, my young Master!_

In a moment, however, it was gone. She retracted her hand. He was bereft.

Integra stood, dusted down her dress, and brushed past him. "Let's go inside."

Alucard remained frozen in place. Her tender touch had branded him, her sweet scent was bedeviling him. It was Hellsing blood, and more than that, it was her blood.

At length he rose and turned to her.

"You have not told me, Integra, about your nightmare."

She was facing the sun. She was silent for a while. Then she answered, almost inaudibly.

"It doesn't matter now. It's in the past."

And it was spoken with weariness and resignation and a tinge of bitterness.

He had been drawn to all Hellsings, yet none had enthralled him so effortlessly as Integra, whom he had been attuned to ever since she had settled her warm little body next to his corpse. "You won't mind me here, will you?" she had asked. No, my lady, I will not. Give me your blood, and I shall be your knight forever.

But the girl standing in the light, resplendent in her stained gown— _like petals on snow, delicious_ —was both familiar and foreign. There was something. Something he could not name. Something she was not telling. It was troubling and a bit tantalizing. Had she not barred him from traversing through her mind, he would have done so already, at the risk of incurring her wrath. What was it that she was hiding?

 _I do enjoy a challenge, Integra._

"What of your wound? Will you not let me tend to it? I'd hate to have it fester," he suggested silkily.

She sniffed and inclined her head toward him with a critical eye. "You mean, you're craving a treat."

"You know me well," Alucard said, with an unnecessary bow. His avaricious red orbs leered at her behind a curtain of midnight hair. "I crave the life you shed. I crave _you_ , as a loyal hound who craves nothing but the beckoning hand of his dear Master."

Integra laughed.

When she did, he knew it was imperative that he discover what she was hiding.

For Integra, as resilient and used to his advances as she was, was only an inexperienced teenager, and part of the enjoyment of beguiling her was glimpsing the delightful diffusion of color across her lovely dark skin, and hearing her bluster. Yet here she was, laughing off his words.

The eyes behind the curtain of hair sharpened. _What are you not telling, my coquette?_

She quietened. "What blandishments," she remarked.

Integra had missed this. She had missed his shamelessness, his outrageous comments, his puerile attempts to rile her up...she had missed _him_. She had missed everything about him. She would no longer deny that now. She had waited for him, she had—

 _You love him_ , said the voice that sounded like Seras. _You admitted it_.

 _Hush_.

She flexed her wounded hand and fresh blood pooled in her palm. She raised it up to his face and watched his nostrils flare, his fangs elongate, his tongue protrude. As he closed in, she moved her arm lower, and lower, and lower, until he had to get down on one knee for his mouth to be aligned with the offering. He grinned at her actions.

"May I be bold and inquire if this indicates that you have forgiven me for my nonexistent transgression, my Master?" Alucard rasped.

Nonexistent.

"Yes," she said simply.

It was nonexistent.

For—

"Then I shall be thorough," he said, and latched his lips onto her wound in a bastardization of a kiss.

—it was in the past. She had deemed it the past.

 _If this is my second chance..._

She would not let it become the future.

So softly that even with his vampiric hearing he thought he had imagined it, Integra whispered, "Don't be. Alucard."

He sucked. He licked. He laved.

Her blood was as sweet as expected.

But how curious.

He thought he could taste bitterness.

He thought he could taste grief.

xx

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She was young, she was healthy. Her eyes were intact, her heart was whole. She had her family back. She should be happy.

She was not happy. She was lost. She was a lie.

She had wanted to see her vampire again, but not this way.

She had wanted to see her butler again, but not this way.

She had wanted to greet them as an old woman, who had done everything the world had asked of her. They would have met in some picturesque manifestation of heaven, and she would have let her butler know she had forgiven him, and she would have closed her eyes, and she would have gone to sleep, perhaps in the arms of her Romanian prince. Wake me up when Seras and Pip come, and the five of us will have tea together.

A fairy tale.

The kingdom of heaven appeared to slip further and further from her reach the more and more blood drenched her gloves. The people she loved were either vampire or traitor (or both) and she would not be surprised if that was reason enough for her to be disqualified. Some evenings, she would indulge in a bottle of whiskey and declare, "Bollocks, I'll just make my own kingdom of heaven. Or should that be queendom of heaven? Fuck if I care," and wax heretic (she could almost feel the spirit of Alexander Anderson breathing down her neck) until Seras gently pried the glass out of her hand and ushered her to bed.

 _Oh. Alexander Anderson must be alive, too._

 _Bollocks._

The crown of her head brushed her companion's elbow.

When she was still growing, she had been annoyed by their height differences. He was simply too tall, which made conversation awkward, since she required to meet people's eyes when she talked to them. "Shrink or lower yourself, whichever you prefer," she had ordered. "It's ridiculous having to crane my neck and stand on tiptoe when talking to you."

"Very well," he had said, and he had knelt for her. And when he peeked at her through his messy locks with his crooked smile, her heart had beat a little quicker.

Integra wondered, as her healed palm tingled pleasantly, as they walked side by side to the front doors, to the inevitable confrontation, if she would ever get used to this feeling of displacement. Her vampire companion was not helping matters. His silence, his ignorance, the air between them, all seemed to be voids she had no choice but to fill once more, evidence that her lifework had become a palimpsest. If she filled these gaps anew, would she recognize herself in the end?

Thirty years she had lived without him, thrice the time she had known him. The morning he left her, she aged centuries in the span of a few hours. She had never felt older than when she returned to her ravaged house, trudged through the corridors that were splattered red—again—recovered the bodies of her men— _again_ —their heads, their limbs—how many flowers would she need this time?—until Seras had begged her please, please, Master Integra, you have to stop, you need to rest.

Rest? I've lost all rights to a rest. I won't ever be able to rest again.

And just when she thought she finally could, this.

Her arm grazed the sleeve of his coat.

 _Isn't it funny, Count? How alike we have become._

 _We both yearn for an end._

Integra stared out to the grounds. Her mind was racing, churning out possibilities upon possibilities. What she knew could not repeat itself. She could not risk the same war and the same losses. As long as she was back in this world, she would do everything in her power to prevent it.

And where would that leave her?

She snorted. _And here I thought, self-reflection is a sign of senility._

She missed the strange look Alucard sent her.

They were nearing the doors when something caught her attention. Something white.

Daisies. There were daisies in the grass. Integra stopped automatically.

 _Daisies are Seras' favorite..._

To her horror, she felt her eyes sting. For heaven's sake, did this body of hers have no inhibitions whatsoever?

"Master?"

She blinked and quickly redirected her attention. She moved along. "The weather is nice," she said lamely.

"You would think so," Alucard muttered. He had conjured his tinted spectacles and was peering at her behind them. "Must you pick a sunny day to run out in a fright?"

"I did not 'run out in a fright,' as you put it, but I'll be sure to pick a thunderstorm next time," Integra groused. Despite her tone, she was grateful for his complaint. Yes, this was what she needed. Inane chatter, a semblance of normalcy, and how pitiful it was that what she considered normal was walking in daylight with a petulant vampire?

But for her it was normal. Painfully.

"There is beauty in a storm, don't you agree? The cacophony of light and sound, the fury of wind and water, nature's very own brand of monstrosity, my Master." He smiled with all his teeth. "A perfect breeding ground for the likes of me."

"Perfect for you, who revels in the justifiable chaos it brings," she agreed.

He preened.

They had arrived. Integra turned to the grand double doors.

"But not all storms are of nature."

Alucard hummed. "You say that as though you're expecting a storm behind this door."

Integra smiled at him. The sun had irritated him badly, for he had conjured his fedora as well. She had almost forgotten how silly he looked in it. Its shadow was obscuring his eyes, and so lifting her heels, she nudged the brim upward and gazed into them solemnly through the glasses. It occurred to her how dissimilar they were from Seras' eyes. In hers she had seen his vicariously, but now she realized that, whereas the Draculina's had always managed to retain a softness, his simmered raw, cauldrons of destruction and discord and violent, virulent hunger.

She had seen those eyes weep.

"Why, my Servant," she said, and the word was nostalgic in her mouth. "I thought you knew. My entire life is a storm."

"Why, my Master," he said, and he said it with such ease. "A grand statement to come from a human whose length of time on this plane is a decade and a paltry handful of years."

Her lips twitched. _If only you knew_.

"And you're a shining example of how age is a reliable measurement of maturity."

"My Master with her acerbic tongue," Alucard chuckled. "I wonder, in a few years, will it not be cultured with something else?"

Integra tutted and jerked his hat down. "Irredeemable wretch."

His insidious laughter peppered the air. She listened.

 _I've missed you._

Her smile turned wan.

 _I've missed you, and I resent you for it._

Integra reached for the door handle. Her fingers curled on the metal, and she took a fortifying breath.

She was startled when he snatched her hand. She immediately swiveled around to rebuke him, to stifle at the expression on his face.

"Integra," he said. "You may very well call me a child, but I hope you don't take me as a fool." Alucard had removed his glasses, and was fixing her with crimson irises that burned brightly with the intent to pry her darkest secrets out of her soul. "What are you hiding, Miss Hellsing? Why are you acting differently today?"

"Am I? I wasn't aware I had a standard," Integra drawled. "Unhand me."

His grip loosened in inverse proportion to his gaze. "I may not be able to read your mind under your orders, yet the connection between Master and Servant is insuperable. I know when things are not what they seem."

 _Could have fooled me._

Integra wrenched her hand free and grabbed his face. Her nails dug into his cheeks. "That precious connection of yours certainly didn't help when—"

 _Farewell._

Her visage contorted. For an instant it became the image of grief, to be replaced with an impassive mask. So he had not imagined the taste. Silly girl, did she truly think that would work on him? He was the master of disguise.

"When?"

"Nothing," she said.

"Nothing!" he spat. "Integra." He pressed forward regardless of the nails that were making angry crescents on his flesh. "You forgave me my transgression, which I'm starting to believe must be existent after all," Alucard growled, "but you are still bitter about it."

She did not know whether to slap him or kiss him.

That was when the door opened.

"Integra!" Miriam shrieked, so overcome with relief that she hugged her without noticing the compromising position she had found the girl and the vampire in. "My goodness, child! Where have you been? We've been worried sick!"

Integra patted the woman's back to make her let her go. She would have apologized, had she not heard another voice.

 _"Integra!"_

There were rapid footsteps coming down the stairs. Before she turned to them, Integra remembered a day in her previous life—the tenth anniversary of the war. She tended to spend the anniversaries quietly, avoiding the public functions all the other knights would be attending, opting instead to wander about the manor in her mourning garb. She would visit the memorial at the back of headquarters that listed the names of the Wild Geese. Seras would already be there, of course. She would be tracing their captain's name even as the man himself murmured soothingly in her ear.

The tenth anniversary was no different, except that Seras had been more inquisitive than usual. "Master Integra, have you visited Walter?"

She had sunk to the ground next to her. "No."

"This year, too?" Seras had looked at her with sad red eyes. "Haven't you forgiven him yet?"

"I have forgiven him a long time ago," Integra had replied.

"Then why? I don't understand."

She had blown her cigar smoke out of her mouth and watched it curl into the sky as opaque and transient as the people in her life.

"It's easier to forgive a ghost."

Sounds were garbled around her. She was conscious simultaneously of Alucard staring at her with fading crescents on his cheeks, of Miriam fussing over her and shoving her lightly, to the direction of the traitor whom she had loved as a parent.

She preferred that ghosts remain ghosts and memories remain memories. It was easier that way. It was easier to forgive a kind face in the past that could not speak, than to confront it in the present and being able to listen to all that it uttered and wondering, wondering, how much of it was truth and how much of it was lies? Walter, Walter, will you tell me this time?

 _We're all liars here_ , a voice that sounded like her old self said.

She was young and healthy and whole and she felt older than she had in the morning after the war, older than yesterday, older still than the wrinkled face before her that was saturated with such concern and affection.

"Hello, Walter," Integra said, and she honestly could not help the tears that followed.

xx

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* * *

NOTES

Good news! Now that _Snow White_ is finished I'll be able to keep a regular schedule for this! And by "regular" I mean something like an update every week or two. This is a rather difficult endeavor, since I have to delve into the emotions of these very complex characters, and being an overemotional person myself, I tend to get overwhelmed. So please be patient with me if I end up being late. I'm always, always trying to deliver my best! I should mention, the quickest way to check my survival is my Tumblr blog. The address is in my bio.

Thank you so much for your wonderful words last chapter and I hope you enjoyed this chapter as well. It was hard, because one, the weather is horrible, and two, the weather is horrible, and three, Integra's situation is so convoluted that even I, the poor masochist who has undertaken this, have to take a breather every now and then. Second chances are really not that fantastic, you know?

Oh! And the rating is for violence, unresolved sexual tension, and, uh, maybe more? I make no promises! Let's see what the future holds.

And because music is such a big part of my writing, shout out to my queen Hamasaki Ayumi, who always manages to dissolve me into a teary ball of tragic romance.

I almost forgot. There will absolutely be no underage sex. No. Just no. Even if Integra is technically fifty-two.


	4. eyes of war

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 **03.**

 **eyes of war**

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Three, she had learned from a book on numerology in the family library, was a perfect number. It had a past, a present, and a future. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Three was the number of pictures in a triptych, and it had been the whimsical side of her that thought it an apt style for describing her life. She would be in the center frame, Alucard the right, Walter the left, and the title would be a single word. _Loyalty_.

Loyalty. _Oil on canvas. This painting depicts a lady knight and her two retainers, one of whom will ultimately betray her._

Time would reveal the traitor, whose picture would hang lower and lower on the wall until it lay face down on the floor.

The other picture would disappear altogether.

Only the portrait of the lady knight would remain, her beauty and glory unchanging, as perpetual as the blue diamonds of her eyes. Or so it would seem.

A careful look. A closer look. And there would be flakes of paint peeling off the canvas.

That was what Integra felt like right now. A decrepit painting—a spectacle, really—and oddly detached from herself. She was old Integra, who was observing her younger image from afar with a solitary appraising eye. _Look at you. Crying without inhibition. How long has it been? Weeks? Months?_

 _Decades_.

 _And this is you, who shed not a tear even when your entire world fell to pieces_. Old Integra laughed a laugh weathered by years of smoking cigars and barking out orders. _You don't cry. You get angry instead. Crying is a waste of time. Even Seras and Alucard cried more and they're_ vampires _. Yet here you are, proving yourself human after all._

Yes, Integral Hellsing did not cry. Tears would merely be proof that she was not made of iron, that she was made of the same fallible set of emotions as anyone else. In her world, that was a weakness. So she sublimated her tears into flames. She let them burn her foes to ashes. Death, death, death to those who have wronged me. To Hellsing's enemy. To Britain's enemy.

Even if that is someone I love.

But the gears of sublimation must have come to a standstill when she died and yet to restart, because these stupid tears were not drying.

"My lady," Walter said, aghast.

Integra wiped them away with deceptive serenity. "It's nothing."

"There you go again with the 'nothing,'" Alucard hissed behind her.

She did not deign to respond.

"Are you alright?" Walter grasped her shoulders and looked her over rather frantically. She might have been amused by how he panicked at the sight of her tears had she not been so utterly miserable.

"Integra! Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," she heard herself say.

She recognized this Walter. This was the Walter who had read her to sleep when her father could not, who had made her chicken soup when she was sick, who had always known when she wanted her tea and how she wanted it. Her dear old butler. She could at least smile at this Walter, so she did. She did despite how fragile it felt.

He was exactly as she remembered him. His monocle was a bit askew, having slipped while he was running around searching for her. But his _wrinkles_. They were the ones she had conjured when she complained to Seras about her own. She could not have imagined then that she would be facing them this way, as grooves on a mask hiding treacherous youth.

With that train of thought Integra sobered.

These hands on her shoulders were not the hands of the man whose possessions she had buried. The man who had left his monocle, his gloves, his shirts and vests behind, folded meticulously, knowing he would never wear them again. The man who had put all his cards on the table. No.

These were the hands of the man who still held onto them.

And they were unbearably heavy.

She stepped backward out of their reach as naturally as possible, her plastic smile in place. "I didn't mean to worry you. I simply had...a nightmare..."

Walter's brows rose. It was such a familiar expression that her throat constricted. "A nightmare."

Alucard's gaze was boring holes into the back of her head.

"Yes," Integra whispered.

"Forgive me, my lady, but I find it hard to believe that a simple nightmare could cause all this!" Walter was visibly upset. "You've had nightmares before, Integra. They never made you disappear from the manor for nearly an hour with blood down the front of your sleepwear!"

"What about your cut, my dear?" Miriam asked. "Do you need the doctor? At the very least it'll need bandaging—"

"There's no need," Integra assured, her smile growing strained. "Honestly, all this fuss for—"

"—nothing," Alucard finished sarcastically.

She ignored him.

Walter's eyes shifted from her to Alucard, then to Miriam. "A cup of tea, please, Mrs. Bolger. Chamomile. And something light for breakfast."

"Oh, yes, well." Miriam eyed the contentious group of three uncertainly. "Of course." She took Integra's hand and squeezed it. "My dear, I don't quite understand what's going on, but I do hope you'll cheer up. I always said you're too young to be carrying the world's burden on those shoulders. Sometimes you need to set it down."

She _had_ set it down, and it had rolled back onto her shoulders like she was a modern Sisyphus. Nonetheless, Integra graced the woman with a genuine smile. Miriam, she recalled, worked days, was little aware of what went on at night, and had a barely passable comprehension of Alucard as a "gentleman" who was "not quite right." She had a tendency to nose and coddle, yet she was the only innocent present. Integra could appreciate that now, more than she ever had in her past life. "Thank you. I'll try."

Miriam left to prepare tea and breakfast. The entrance hall was one person less and suddenly seemed very small.

 _Three, the perfect number._

 _The lady knight and her retainers. One betrays and the other disappears._

"Walter, there isn't anything I have to tell you that I wouldn't have with Miriam present," Integra said, getting straight to the point. She had been _dead,_ she was weary, she was grimy, and here she was, stuck between two men whom she both loved and resented. The last thing she wanted was a replication of the last time the three of them were together. "I had a nightmare. I stumbled and broke my mirror and cut myself. I went outside to get some air and tarried because the sun was nice. That's all there is to it, and if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get changed. Alucard, go to sleep."

"You're a shite liar," Alucard said.

"Bully for me," Integra intoned, glancing at neither of them and bypassing Walter to make her way toward the main staircase.

"Integra, you can't deny this is highly irregular of you," Walter argued, turning to her. "At least tell me what your nightmare was about. Was it Richard?"

"No."

"As if the rat would merit a walk-on in her terrors," Alucard sneered. "She wouldn't tell me, why would she tell you?"

Walter regarded the vampire with steely grey eyes. "Because she has done so in the past, and perhaps she chose not to tell you because she knows you're responsible."

Integra stopped in her tracks. _For fuck's sake_.

"Walter," she started, pivoting slowly in front of the stairs, "Alucard had nothing to do with this."

"Very well," he conceded readily, "but may I ask, did Alucard close your wound?"

The palm Alucard had lavished attention on smarted. Integra curled her fingers over it. "Yes," she bit out, "but I offered. Alucard didn't—"

"You little punk," Alucard said, his voice dangerously soft. "I didn't think you would be foolish enough to actually suggest that." Until then he had been leaning against the doors, an immobile sentry watching her with keen red orbs under the brim of his fedora. He now advanced toward Walter, hatless, hair spindling around him. "You insinuate that I manipulated her dreams, on the off chance that I might taste her blood?"

"It wouldn't be the first time you attempted to manipulate her for less," Walter said with composure. "You might think yourself obedient, Alucard, but we know you're not above finding loopholes to exact your twisted form of entertainment."

"What I find entertaining," Alucard drawled, "is how a man who has already failed his master _spectacularly_ is so desperately trying to depreciate his rival."

Walter's monocle flashed. "I've explained myself on that matter. I returned as fast as I was able. You can't hold that over my head forever, Alucard. It's becoming droll."

"Not as droll as blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong around Integra. I'm a monster, not an imbecile." Alucard stared past the butler at his master's inscrutable face, his eyes hooded. "If I attempt to manipulate her, it'll be knowing fully well it doesn't work on her."

"Of course it won't work on her. She's better than you'll ever be," Walter stated. "Something you should keep in mind."

"Oh, but I do, in the same way I enjoy keeping in mind that _I_ am her most loyal, capable servant, while you are a senile, obsolete human." Alucard's lips furled deeply, the epitome of conceit, gloating at his former partner.

Walter's fingers twitched.

Then there was laughter coming from the stairs.

"My God, I forgot how childish the two of you were." Integra covered her mouth as more dry peals escaped. She had to steady herself against the balustrade with how much she shook from—from laughter, yes, not this, this bloody blistering ache in her heart. Alas, Alucard was correct, and even to herself she was a shite liar.

The two bickering men stood in bewilderment. Walter appeared abashed.

"Such _children_." She breathed in raggedly. Loud, vivid flashbacks the likes of which she had not experienced since the last anniversary of the war took advantage of her frayed nerves to blind her. _A girl in white, with long black hair and manic red orbs, cackling as she drains the streets of blood_ _ **stop drinking stop drinking!**_ _A boy with grey eyes that should not be cold, yet they were_ _ **so cold so cold!**_ _I ordered your death!_

She blinked, and it had only been a second.

What good was it that her heart was intact, if it was going to be bludgeoned all over again? This was her comeuppance. Her penance, her fucking punishment. Stuck in a child's body with these two grown-up children. A final laugh, akin to a great sigh, was expelled, and she glowered at one and then the other. "I've had enough with you hypocrites. Leave me be and if you have something other than rubbish to say, have the decency to wait an hour."

" _Hypocrites_?" Walter croaked.

She ascended the stairs. Crimson eyes followed her figure of petals on snow. Alucard thought he had never seen her walk like that before. He knew this particular gait because he himself had employed it a long time ago, when he was his own master in his own castle, when there was nothing breaking his monotony but the coordinated stomps on the ground that heralded another war, another sea of blood, another feast.

She walked like a battlefield ghost.

 _What are you hiding? What are you hiding?_ His blood swelled with lust, lust for her secrets, the answers she would not give. _Tell me! Integra!_

She may have heard him. Her eyes flicked downstairs and for the briefest moment met his, and he saw them. Behind their glacial walls, the battered fires of—

She turned the corner.

"War," Alucard whispered.

"What?" Walter asked warily.

He did not answer. _She has war in her eyes_. His young master who had never known war, contained its flames. How could that be? His visage rippled, desirous, anticipant. "How _lovely_."

"Did you get up on the wrong side of the coffin as well?" Walter demanded. He straightened his monocle. "Integra says you had no part in this and I'm inclined to believe her. But something's obviously wrong and I swear, Alucard, if you worsen it by hassling her I _will_ act."

"Aging has made you all bark and no bite, Angel. You say that as if you can actually do something." Alucard melted into the floor before the wires could sever his head and moved through the concrete as shadows, cackling the entire way to Integra's room. He would overlook Walter's cheek; their lady's reaction had rendered them all off-kilter this morning. Really, what had brought on those tears?

Tears were not a weakness to him. Some men evidently regarded them as a weakness, but they were simpletons. He, on the contrary, preferred men who were unafraid to shed tears to those who shed none. Tears were the overflow of the inner whirs, and a true warrior was one who could wipe them off and stand taller still— _something you yourself have failed, pitiful No-Life King_ —Integra's had been such.

What flummoxed him was the cause. She had been perfectly sound just yesterday. The month was showing a record low for Midian activity. The moth-eaten pissants who deluded themselves superior to Integra were keeping their mouths shut for once. She had bid him and Walter goodnight and retired early after completing the day's agenda. Yet here she was, a starkly different picture.

That nightmare. It had everything to do with that nightmare.

He materialized in front of the door. He did not knock or make any move to enter. The plank of wood did not stop him from entering, of course, except he could hear the bathwater running. It was very, very tempting, but he was not _that_ tactless.

Through the locked door her room smelled strongly of detergent. The staff had cleaned up the mess, though underneath the offending stench, his nose could detect the teasing traces of camellias and bergamot. What a waste. He could have lapped it up and saved them the trouble, but he had had to find her first. And she had rewarded him. The low hum of her life throbbed in his dead veins, in the precious sample of blood she had indulged him. Sweet blood. Bitter blood. It sang in doleful tunes.

 _If there is no nightmare from which one does not wake, then why are you still sleeping?_

 _Little sleeping beauty with eyes wide open...eyes of war..._

Alucard blended into the shadows. He would grant his Briar Rose her privacy for an hour. He would count down the seconds and they would talk.

xx

xx

Countless possibilities and none without a price.

She slouched in the bath. The bubbles around her gradually popped, and so did her raw emotions, one by one, leaving her desensitized. When she pulled the stopper she imagined the water to be all her concerns going down the drain until she was met with the sight of her naked, young body. Reality did love to slap her in the face. She got up and dressed.

Twenty minutes later in her office, Integra looked down at her clothes and sighed. A blouse and a skirt. Her wardrobe had contained nothing but those and several summer dresses. It should not have surprised her, since she had not begun to wear men's clothing regularly until she was seventeen. She was Miss Hellsing, not Sir Hellsing. Miss Hellsing wore blue skirts and sensible loafers and did not quite comfortably settle into her chair, which was too large for her. She had to get used to being Miss Hellsing, and quickly. She grabbed the nearest stack of papers to find out where exactly she stood in this era.

Or she would have. Instead Integra emitted a groan and pushed the stack away. Paperwork. Again. And this was the twentieth century. Twentieth century paperwork. God, this was _awful_.

She rose and circled her office. It was mostly the same. The same tall windows, which she glanced out. The sun was glaring. She retreated to the bookshelves and reacquainted herself with half of the titles she had lost or thrown out. As she read their spines, it dawned on her that in the decades she had worked here, spent the majority of her life, it had undergone the least amount of change. Change had always brought her suffering. And it only made sense that the biggest change of them all would bring her the most suffering.

Alucard. Walter. Alucard. Walter. She berated herself for her lack of reservation, but those idiots. Those fucking idiots. Alucard with his rot on age and failure. Walter with his rubbish on obedience and manipulation. _Hypocrites_. They should have cut out each other's hearts fifty years ago and saved everyone a whole lot of misery.

 _You don't mean that._

She realized her hands were clenched into fists, so she willed herself to relax. Knowing Alucard, he would heed her wishes and wait an hour, not a minute more, before barging in. She had to _try_ and act the role of fifteen-year-old Integra, though details of herself at this age was fuzzy at best. She turned her back to the shelves.

There was a painting on the opposite wall, depicting a man with shrewd blue eyes. Integra paused. She had had this picture relocated to the library. Abraham Van Helsing, her great-grandfather, was not someone she wanted to see every day.

She pursed her lips at the man whose decision to harness his enemy had skewed the fates of his descendants and laid all the repercussions on her lap. "Men must insist on making bad choices," she murmured scornfully. She studied the countenance that bore minimal resemblance to hers, returning to the eyes.

Red.

Her moue deepened. "A bit tasteless, don't you think?"

"Poetic, rather," said the portrait of Abraham with diabolic irises. "Have we aggrieved you to the extent of scorning your forefathers? What would Arthur say?"

"He would say, don't listen to the demon," Integra said, and sauntered to her desk.

He chuckled. The portrait's eyes followed her like the props of a tacky horror film. "The demon you own, little lady. What does that make you?"

"God, probably, since Lucifer was His angel," she said loftily.

The demon whistled. "Unfilial _and_ blasphemous. My Master, you are on a roll. You're stoking my curiosity." His tone became scratchy. "A curious monster is a dangerous beast, Integra."

"I said to come to me for something other than rubbish, and this is definitely rubbish." She sat in her chair imperiously, not allowing its size to dwarf her. Her body may be Miss Hellsing, yet her mind and soul were Sir Hellsing and this was her suzerainty. "After squabbling with Walter like toddlers in front of me, this is how you choose to act? Step out of that picture before I _order_ you to your coffin."

Alucard took far too much time drifting out of the frame, and Integra had to roll her eyes. Again, always so difficult. It was almost jarring. Dealing with him was different from dealing with Pip, Seras—

She breathed. _Not now_.

He bowed. "About that. I think you upset Walter with your 'hypocrite' comment."

"I'll apologize," Integra merely said, as her insides twisted with a cloying mixture of guilt and righteousness. She did not want to think about Walter at the moment. "Well? Is that all?"

His red, red eyes sought hers. They were calm, Alucard noted. As in the calm before the storm. Not the blue fires that had scorched him as her talons carved crescents into his skin. She was restraining herself.

 _From what?_

"So eager to dismiss me, Integra? Avoid the questions I ask?" He approached the desk slowly. When the toes of his boots hit the wood he leaned forward, casting a blurred crimson reflection on its polished surface. His hair, in contrast to his leisurely movements, was frenetic and gnarled in the air toward her. "They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Cliché, but true. Do you know what I see in yours?"

Her eyes never left his. "Enlighten me."

He was very close. She could feel his coldness.

"War," he said.

She did not blink.

"Now, how could that be? You have never known war."

She was quiet.

A wayward tendril of black hair reached for her. Integra raised a hand to wave it away but was caught. The shadowy extension wrapped itself around her fingers, her wrist. She did not seem bothered by this. Another anomaly. Usually she would shake it off at once. _Integra, have you any idea what you're doing to me?_

"Perhaps," she said, "you, or I, have a vivid imagination."

"Perhaps," he said, "or there is something you're not telling."

"That again," Integra sniffed. She tugged her bound hand half-heartedly, to which his hair responded by tightening. "Even if I was hiding something, why would I tell you? You should excuse a lady her secrets, Alucard." She smirked. "You seem to sorely lack finesse in handling this kind of matter, especially considering your history with women."

Alucard's eyes became tinged with fervor. "Is it finesse you require, my Master?"

Their conversation had derailed somewhat. Integra did not let her emotions overpower her this time, but inwardly she shivered.

No one but Alucard talked to her like this. No one else dared to bait, to presume... She was abruptly crushed by the observation that her life had become barren of this tug-of-war simultaneously with his disappearance. She had ensconced herself in work, locked the gates of her heart, guarded it jealously. She had let no newcomers in. There was only space for Seras and Pip and maybe Gregory Penwood and a handful of people. She had lived with her passion in exile for years. Then one day, she had discovered a wrinkle.

 _It's gone_ , she remembered thinking. _My spring. I let it pass me by._

Pip was right. She was a lovesick fool.

 _True horror right there. What will I admit next, I secretly enjoy soap operas of the gothic persuasion? This does look like the plot of one. The spinster reawakens in her youth and finds herself again the recipient of a dead Count's butchered, socially unacceptable version of courtship_. Integra snorted.

Alucard misinterpreted the noise. He bared his teeth. "You mock me."

She yanked her captive hand, sending him plummeting to the hardwood desktop. He was practically lying flat on his stomach. He tilted his head up from his position and his expression of insane desire would have felled a lesser woman.

"I do require your finesse, my Servant," she told him sternly. "That does not entail baring your fangs at your Master."

"That nightmare has changed you," Alucard growled. "In the course of one night, everything about you has altered. My Master with her eyes of war..." He was not sure if he was ecstatic or mournful.

He was so very close. "Don't be overdramatic, Alucard. It's just that I saw many things in that dream."

His gaze was burning hotter than the great conflagrations of human history, and possibly hell itself. "And you saw war? Is that it?"

On cue, images flooded, unwanted. Against her better judgement, in proximity to a ravenous monster, her eyelids fluttered shut.

"Did you see blood in that dream, Integra? Were there corpses lining the streets?"

 _Stakes in the ground dripping with blood and the bodies of her enemies their source. Earth upturned and saturated with gunpowder and entrails._

His voice seemed to be echoing inside her mind, the susurrus of the Devil. "Did I deliver that war to you? Was I your champion?"

 _Two figures. A Count and a Countess. For that night, the indisputable rulers of Midian._

So, so very close.

But then—it was the ebb and flow of sea tides, how her thoughts fluctuated. Death had not only compromised her method of sublimation, it had broken open the lock on her memories as well, and so they surged. _The knight disappears at the wake of morning and leaves a trail of broken vows behind._

Integra jerked back to awareness. Their faces were still close enough to kiss. Her hand was still wrapped in his hair. She waited.

In the prolonged silence, the strands loosened and, unhappily, parted from her warmth. Alucard detached himself from the desk at a painstaking pace. When he straightened, it was with tension in every line of his sculpted features.

"Does it... _not matter_ _?"_ he mocked.

Integra's eyes still did not leave his, but they were distant.

"I think it does, Integra. I think it matters absolutely."

"Believe what you will," she said. "It's quite late for you, isn't it?"

Evasion, again. Alucard snarled softly.

"I will bring you to victory through any war, Integra. You know this."

She smiled strangely. "I suppose I do."

And for some reason that made him beyond ravenous. It made him... _anxious_. This not-quite-Integra, this mystery that seemed determined to ruin him.

"I will find out," Alucard promised. "Each and every secret which you insist _does not matter_. You will tell me, and I will be there, holding you in my grasp, as you divulge them willingly."

She accepted his challenge, even as in the abyss of her heart, the bell tolled— _Countess, Countess, you have dug your grave!_

"We shall see."

"I shall retire now, my Master." He faded from the room.

Alucard did not immediately withdraw to his crypt. He instead took a detour to the kitchen, where he nearly crashed into Walter who was about to leave with Integra's breakfast. Accustomed to this, the butler retained the tray and raised a brow at the vampire who was grabbing a packet of blood from the refrigerator and tearing his teeth into the plastic without heating it up.

"You didn't hassle her, did you?"

Alucard was busy slurping to reply. Blood splattered on the tiles.

Walter sighed. "Maybe I'll fare better." He started for the corridor.

"You won't."

Walter halted.

"You sound quite sure."

"You won't," Alucard repeated, his jaw smeared red. "Trust me." He laughed, the racket loud and high and arrogant.

Everything Walter hated.

xx

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* * *

NOTES

More Walter to come next chapter.

The weather is hideous and I think I'm suffocating in the humidity. I hope this chapter doesn't seem too affected. God, I am so ready for autumn and the angsty vibes its winds send me!

Thank you all so much. I can't express adequately how I loved reading your responses and how joyed I am with all the ideas you're giving me. I'm afraid this story will start off a bit slow at first, but I'm really hoping to pick up the pace soon. I can say that a few major events are already set in stone and so is the climax. I know you're impatient to get there, but so am I! Let's journey on this rickety barge together. Be aware, though, it might not be what you expect!

Some of you might recall this from one of my notes in _Snow White_ but the way I interpret Walter's defection in the series really can be summed up as _jealousy_ (not the romantic kind). I'm trying to unfold the dynamics of Integra, Alucard and Walter's relationship as plausibly as possible. God, it's hard! They're such difficult children! And there's a reason the genre of this fic is _drama_. I'm going to spew drama _everywhere_. Be careful you don't drown in it! Stay tuned.


	5. jamais vu

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 **04.**

 **jamais vu**

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The veil of mundanity hung by the summer morning ruffled, the inhabitants of the manor were left in varying states of restlessness. Ostensibly, they were doing what was expected of them. The vampire lay in his coffin. The butler made his way with breakfast. The master was in her office in her chair. Yet where on any other day she would be diligently sifting through her papers, today she sat motionless, her blue eyes faraway in the space her vampire had occupied.

What they reflected was the pattern of the wood, but what they saw was a different kind of wood. A forest. A cadaverous forest. Where she had walked with her hair flowing, the sole semblance of light in its darkness. She had looked up at its trees, and smiled. Then she had looked down at its keeper, and quietly admired his form. Here was the king and he was kneeling. His cape was flying, shredded, giving him the silhouette of dancing flames. He had burned for her. He had killed for her. He had returned for her, for her, only for her, and there was nothing between them now that he was reduced to one man and she was reduced to one woman sharing the same acrid air in the bowels of perdition.

So she had said, _Count_.

And the Count had said, _Countess_.

But once again, there was _everything_ between them. Time. Knowledge. _Walter_. Alucard _himself_.

Anger ate away at her rationality. When she put it into words it did not make sense even to herself. How dare he demand answers from her. How dare he stand there and speak of the alleged war in her eyes as though he had not been its player. How dare he rouse her heart with these—these palpitations—which he did not deserve. _You don't deserve it. Anything. My horrors, my honesty, my heart. You were the one who broke. You think you can traipse into my life, after the years I spent wondering if that shadow in the corner was not yours or if this color red was a trick of the light? Fucker. I can't_ — _I won't_ —

The deplorable thing was, she could not accuse him of any of the above.

She wanted to march down to his crypt, kick his coffin open, seize him by the collar and throttle him. _Ah, but what's the use? What can that deadly mouth offer me?_ Maybe she should revise, and instead kiss that mouth. Bite his lip, make him bleed, mark his skin and maybe, finally, when she had vented thirty years of waiting on his stupidly grinning face she would be exorcised of these ghosts. Because otherwise—Integra smoothed a hand over her left eye and moaned as if in pain—they were not letting her go. Hounding her—like the fucking _dog_ he called himself—

"Bastard," she gasped.

"My lady."

She jolted, her hand falling from her face. Her eyes shot up to the door.

Walter was also startled. "I did knock."

"Oh." Integra shaped her lips into something struggling to resemble a smile. "I must not have heard."

There was a beat.

"I saw you were holding your head," Walter said. "Do you need an aspirin, my lady?"

"No. Come in."

The butler entered with a vague feeling of wrongness that had been nagging at him all morning. He set the tray to the side, then placed a cup and saucer in front of her and poured chamomile from a china pot.

"You missed the tea that was sent up while you were in the bath, so I made a second batch." He stepped back. "I can never say this to Mrs. Bolger, but I do think my brews are a touch more precise."

She stared at the cup.

His brows furrowed. "Would you prefer something else?"

"This is fine."

Integra fingered the handle of the cup. To think that she would be tasting his tea again.

Walter's brews were, in fact, precise. After the war she had made her own tea, yet each attempt had always been off. Always too hot or too cold, too weak or too strong. When she had lamented about this to Seras, the girl had admitted to burning at least six pots in her lifetime trying to boil pasta.

She took a sip, swallowing the memory down with it, the afternoon she had spent with Seras laughing over bitter tea. _This_ tea, however, was perfect. A perfectly tempered, fragrant cup of chamomile.

But of course, everything Walter made was perfect. His weapons especially. So perfect, that not even the vampire wielding his gun had noticed the remote-controlled explosive hidden inside.

She returned the cup to its saucer, fearing she would slop its contents all over the place. "In the language of flowers, chamomile equates to 'energy in adversity.'"

Walter nodded. "A remedial herb for nightmares."

"If only there was such an herb for life after death," Integra said wryly.

He mistakenly thought she was talking about Alucard. "He seemed high-strung when I encountered him. Have you had a disagreement?"

"He was being querulous because I denied him the answers to the newest mystery in his lackluster existence."

"He is unhappy with the stagnancy," Walter agreed, "and seeks an outlet. Which is why I may have overreacted. Integra, please don't doubt my concern. I only want you safe."

Integra was very glad she had not been holding that cup.

Walter's eyes were sincere. They taught her grey could be warm. They were prettier than hers, she had thought as a child. She had told him so. "Father's eyes are blue, and mine are blue, but yours are grey, Walter, and that makes yours the special-est and the prettiest."

"Most special," he had corrected gently. "My lady's opinion is precious to me. Yet acquiescing to it would be telling an untruth, for your eyes are by far the most beautiful."

"Really?"

"Yes. They're like little blue diamonds."

 _I've come a long way from the girl who received that compliment. These diamonds are nowhere near as pristine as hers. Eyes of war, indeed_. Integra gradually dropped her gaze to the tea. Chamomiles were almost identical in appearance to daisies. Daisies, however, meant 'innocence,' and represented all that had fallen through the spaces between her fingers. He was gone, that Walter. This Walter was...a stranger...who looked and talked and acted the same. _Jamais vu,_ Pip would have said.

The same person, recognizable, yet unfamiliar, and painful.

"You must realize, that any errant behavior on your part can be taken as a weakness," he was saying. "And as I mentioned, Alucard is not above exploiting that weakness. Though I can see that he is exceptionally attuned to you," he added, with a hint of a frown, "and that you are somewhat fond of him, you have only known him for three years. You need to be careful."

 _Three years? Try ten._

 _You've no right to speak of him this way._

"I don't doubt your concern for me, Walter," Integra forced out, raising her eyes, her throat dry. "But you shouldn't doubt Alucard's. He has already more than proved himself to me. I will not have him questioned."

"I am merely pointing out a possibility, my lady," Walter defended.

"What good is chasing after a possibility?" she said tiredly. "Some things are set in stone. I am Master and he is Servant, bound by blood, and he will never betray me." _Unlike you_.

"I am not saying he will. Simply beware of his cultured words and what they seek from you."

"Walter, aren't you the one most affected by his words?" Integra sniped.

He stiffened. "Pardon?"

"Really," she went on, feeling a crack in her façade. "You've known him the longest. I shouldn't have to remind you to ignore whatever bull he spews out of his mouth because _he doesn't mean it_." The mask of fifteen-year-old Integra was splintering. She was spilling. "He doesn't mean any of that tripe about—about _growing old_. If anything he envies you for it! Why would you—"

 _throw away the one thing you had over him_

"—let him get to you—"

 _and destroy yourself_

"—it was—"

 _it was_

"—the most foolish thing you could have done." It came out as a whisper.

"Integra," Walter said, stricken.

Then, she had not asked why. There had been no point. _Now_ —

Her nails were digging into her palms where they rested on her skirt. Reminding her. _Don't let your mask shatter, like you did your mirror._ She dug deeper, felt the skin break. It helped. She reined herself in. "I'm sorry, Walter. I was already angry with Alucard; I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

He smiled ruefully. "You've grown so quickly, beyond our reckoning. How my incompetence must have frustrated you. Consider me properly chastised."

"I know you were only worried." Integra picked up her teacup and was pleased when it did not wobble. She drank. _Energy in adversity_.

"To be frank, all the time in the world will not prepare a person for reacquainting with a creature such as Alucard. I'm afraid I may be still in the process of...getting used to him again, so to speak." Walter shook his head. "I've gotten rusty in more ways than one. Forgive me."

For the second time Integra lowered her cup to avoid making a mess. Walter did not, could not realize that what he was asking went beyond this morning's slight. "Don't be silly," her mask replied.

"Nonetheless, I find myself surprised, my lady. Your understanding of Alucard seems to have matured greatly."

"Why is it surprising? Should I not understand my subordinates?" She said this with a tight smile. "Who knows what will befall if I don't."

There were splinters in her words.

The thing about splinters, particularly the tiny ones you are never quite sure how you got, is that they do not hurt unless touched upon. Walter bowed. "My lady is wise." He gestured to the covered plate beside her. "I've kept you from your meal long enough. I'll leave you to it." He started to turn.

"Walter."

Integra came around her desk to stand next to it. She hesitated, for a moment looking as if she would run into his arms, like she had done as a small child. But she stayed where she was. A hand gripped the edge in want of stability.

"Walter, you know I love you, right?"

For the umpteenth time that morning Walter was surprised. "Why, of course I do." He stalled. He could have given her a hug, yet something stopped him. Perhaps the way her face had gone curiously blank.

"Know that I love you as well, Integra," he said. "And that if there is anything you need or wish to tell me, I will always be here."

When he left, the air was stale.

Cold. Was it not summer? Ah, it was just her, then. She wrapped her arms around herself. Hugging herself.

"You will, won't you."

The statement was followed by an equally sardonic puff of laughter.

Integra returned to her seat. The tea was lukewarm. She did not care to drink it anymore. She held the cup in her hands and stared into it, fancying herself a scryer, fishing for her fortunes in its yellowish depths. All she saw was her youthful face.

Chamomiles were almost identical to daisies. Yet the first to be sacrificed in the pursuit of energy in adversity was innocence.

To Walter, Alucard had been that adversity, she thought.

A bound one, a subservient one, but ever present, ever potent. A land mine waiting to be stepped on. A glorified piece of garbage that he, the Angel of Death, must invariably collect. Partnership did not matter. What would a vampire care? True immortals did not exist. He would prove it to him. He pursued that unattainable dream and it sapped him of every virtue. He was willing to risk his wisdom, his duty, his love. He had chosen to, back in Warsaw, September 1944.

Then Arthur had sealed Alucard away.

Integra had reached this conclusion on a night in, ironically, September. A year after the war, in this very office, nursing a bottle of whiskey in candlelight and clutching her pounding left orbit. Papers had been strewn on the floor, some of them crumpled.

Walter had been just as much of a reason for her father's decision as Alucard himself. Arthur Hellsing had been many things but never ignorant. The less refined mask worn by a younger, wilder Walter would have had holes to see through. Having glimpsed that futile ambition, had he not taken measures to prevent it? Leaving Alucard to rot and Walter to grow old, anticipating that age would mellow him?

"A fat fucking lot of good that did," she had said.

Age had not mellowed Walter. It had merely made him desperate.

Twenty-three-year-old Integra had wondered, as she had never allowed herself to wonder sober, if like everything else, his love for her had been a ruse as well. Under the blanket of alcohol where thoughts were trackless that single query picked at her, an incessant vulture. Grey eyes that had been so cold, so cold, had their warmth before been artifice, too? She wondered, and wondered and wondered until the side of her skull felt as though it had been pierced with a bullet all over again. She laid her head on the wood, and her glasses reflected the flickering candle. The world appeared ephemeral in its glow.

 _This world is after all a violent, fleeting dream..._

A hand landed on her shoulder, softly.

"Master Integra, is your eye hurting?"

"Seras," she said. _Seras, have you come to pity me, too?_

"Did you drink the whole thing? Master! The doctor said you shouldn't drink! It's bad for your eye!"

"What does another vice matter?" Integra slurred. "This world...is fleeting..."

There was a pause. Then the crackle of a piece of paper being smoothed out.

When an arm hoisted her up, its hand was empty. Integra was on her feet. But not walking. Floating, perhaps. "Seras," she murmured. "My uneaten pair of wings."

 _"She's damn round the bend."_

"Pip!"

 _"Hey, I'm not judging. As coping mechanisms go, drinking is pretty tame."_

She leaned heavily into her carrier. Her vision was blurry. She was blinking at a tunnel of darkness. Unknowable, like her butler.

"Seras."

"Yes?"

"Was I a good master?"

There was a catch of unnecessary breath.

The voice that answered her, however, was firm. "The best."

The darkness was blinking back at her.

"Then why wasn't I enough?"

She felt the arm supporting her tremble. "You were. You were enough." The girl was not so much supporting her now as she was herself. "Master Integra, when you—when you meet Walter again—"

"Sending me to an early grave, Police Girl?"

"When you meet him again," Seras said, "you'll see. He loved you. It wasn't because he didn't love you."

(The scryer emerges from her vision.)

Fifteen-year-old Integra set her cup down, pulled her breakfast forward, uncovered it and began to eat. She was hardly aware of what she was putting into her mouth, and had no appetite whatsoever. Yet masquerades had to continue, pretenses carry on, the living go on living. Memories had to be folded with care and locked inside a gilded box, emotions herded, questions reserved for another day and names of loved ones uttered with a farewell kiss. And in the blink of an eye, none would recognize her as other than Integral Hellsing, the Iron Maiden. Hinges oiled, spikes sharpened and awaiting the death verdict that would fall from her own lips.

"Seras, you were right," she said, allowing herself a last respite before sliding her disguise in place, just in time for the knock on her door.

"Miss Hellsing, your tutor is due to arrive at ten."

"Thank you, Miriam."

She buttered her toast, her knuckles white around the knife. She bit. She chewed. She swallowed.

 _Seras, you were right._

 _And that's the worst part._

xx

xx

A day in the life of a butler was straightforward, if not tedious. Running an estate was no small feat, yet it was eased by routine, and Walter C. Dornez' routine had been nearly the same for fifty years. Preparing morning tea, afternoon tea, evening tea, and every other tea in between. Serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Dusting the shelves of the library, which was off-limits to ordinary staff members. Reviewing the ledger. Making adjustments. Rinse. Repeat.

 _Clockwork._

Walter was used to the monotone that had become a fixture ever since Midian activity had plummeted several years past. Seasons tumbled by, among them his as a reaper of the earth. Did he miss it? Yes, but he had more important things to do. The aforementioned list of his duties contained mere trivialities. His paramount duty was to nurture his ward, his lady, the young Miss Integral Hellsing, into the finest director the organization had seen.

His routine was Integra's routine, or rather, her routine was his. She drank the tea he prepared, ate the meal he served, read the books he dusted, confirmed the adjustments he made. Clockwork, in juxtaposition. The hour hand followed the minute hand.

Not today.

Her behavior was troubling to him. So troubling, in fact, that he had had half a mind to ring Dr. Trevelyan. What if it was a sign of some kind of summer flu? After all, night terrors were often indicators of a health problem. When he had walked in to witness her holding her head, he had been convinced.

His concern had been rebuffed. Not a word about her terror, even when he had more or less prompted her with the chamomile. Truthfully, he had been crushed. It was not that, by having her confide in him and not Alucard, he had been hoping to show the vampire up. It was just that she had confided in him always before. Alucard, who had the tact of a lemming, would of course end up angering her. That was where he came in. To be her confidant.

Walter hated it when Alucard was right.

As he approached the study, this time carrying a tray of Darjeeling, the butler could not help but mull over their conversation. Fondness and understanding—the terms he had used—were insufficient to explain the vehemence Integra had displayed in defending Alucard. It had been a deeper thing which had discomfited him, and he dared not presume... He thought that perhaps it was a teenage thing, wanting validation of a family member's love while simultaneously distancing herself from it. There had only been a few steps between him and Integra, yet it had seemed to be an inexplicably great distance. The way she had asked if he knew she loved him had been an echo.

Perhaps he was going senile.

"Alucard, envy growing old?" Walter chuckled. "What a concept."

What did Alucard know of aging? When he, that bastard, could appear as young as he wanted, as beautiful as he wanted? He had to wake up every dawn to the prospect of another line on his face that increased his resemblance to a piece of driftwood. Alucard was a rotting skeleton with intact flesh. He did not need his envy. What he needed was to drive a stake through that flesh.

Walter was pulled out of his fancies when he saw Ms. Crane, the history tutor, rush out of the study.

"Mr. Dornez," she announced upon spotting him, "I resign."

The contents of the tray stayed admirably still, if he did say so himself. "I beg your pardon?"

"My contract," Ms. Crane said, her face interestingly puce, "was to instruct Miss Hellsing on the subject of history, not to engage in verbal sparring. Good day."

Flabbergasted, he let the woman storm past him. He peered into the doorway.

Integra was sitting serenely at a desk, reading a book. She did not look up when she spoke. "Has that insipid woman resigned?"

"She did say as much, my lady."

"Good." Integra flipped a page.

She was not forthcoming. Walter had to ask. "What happened?"

Integra flipped another page. "The text she chose was biased, inaccurate, and," she closed the book, "had a nauseatingly optimistic view of the future. She turned unattractively purple when I told her so. Tell me, Walter, was I present when we engaged her as my tutor?"

Did she not remember? "Yes."

"Hmm. I must have been stupider than I thought." She tossed the book to the floor. "What other lessons do I have today?"

Where was she going with this? "It's summer, so you have a couple in the afternoon."

"Cancel them."

"Excuse me?"

"Cancel them. I don't need them." Integra rose as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary. "These lessons are an insult to my intelligence and to my time, Walter. I should like to study by myself from now on."

"But my lady," Walter said. "The knights—"

"The knights," she repeated. A little smile formed on her lips. "How could I forget. Is Sir Penwood well?"

He had no idea why she was singling out Shelby Penwood, of all people. "He is."

"I'll have to visit him." She calmly made for the door. "Bring that up to the library."

Walter balanced the tea tray. "Integra, the knights are invested in your education."

"Yes, I do remember that," Integra said dryly. "They'll have their grades, rest assured. Don't I only need to pass the exams?"

"Yes," Walter verified reluctantly. "But are you certain?"

"I'm certain. I'll be in the library all day. Try not to disturb me."

Walter watched her receding back.

In the afternoon, when he arrived at the library with that hour's Earl Grey, he saw Integra curled up in an armchair with a stack of tomes at her feet. She was absorbed in her reading, and again did not look up at his entrance. He kept respectfully silent, poured a cup and set it atop the stack.

She did not thank him.

Walter was abruptly and strongly reminded of an autumn dusk a year ago, when he had been passing by this very room and noticed it was occupied. Voices sounded from the seats near the fireplace.

Integra and Alucard were conversing in a foreign language. He remembered belatedly that the vampire had offered her lessons in Romanian which, after due consideration, she had accepted. The sinuous tongue of the former _prin_ _ț_ _român_ slithered in the air, pursued by the clumsy enunciation of the young English girl.

Alucard laughed. "Your pronunciation is atrocious."

"I've been learning it on and off for only four years, you git. What did you expect?"

"I'm surprised Arthur didn't enforce it sooner. He must have become complacent in his later years." There was a smirk in the mild insult.

"Don't talk about him like that."

"Yet the evidence sits before you, my Master."

Integra sighed. "Can we move on?"

"Very well. Let us try something simpler this time. A poem."

"A poem is simple?"

"The rhythm will make it easier to read aloud, my Master. Allow me."

Integra listened, as did Walter outside.

 _"Spune-mi, daca te-as prinde-ntr-o zi_

 _si ti-as saruta talpa piciorului,_

 _nu-i asa ca ai schiopata putin, dupa aceea,_

 _de teama sa nu-mi strivesti sarutul?"_

" _Spune-mi_ , that means 'tell me.' And I heard _picior_ , that's 'foot.' _Sarutul_...?"

"The kiss."

Walter almost barged in.

Integra's voice was positively radiating a blush. "Alucard! Just what kind of poem is this?"

"A perfectly harmless one, my Master. Why? Are you flustered? How impressionable you are."

"I am _not_ —argh! Alright. Give me that book. I'll read it."

She had, and somehow managed to transfigure an elegant poem into a hodgepodge of stutters and reiterations. Yet she persevered.

 _"..._ _de teama sa nu-mi strivesti s-sarutul?"_

" _Da_."

"What?"

"Your pronunciation is unerringly atrocious."

There was the distinct thud of a shoe colliding with a shin. Alucard cackled.

He would have known he was there. The amusement in his tone gave it away. Walter had withdrawn, intending to inquire about the poem's meaning later, but had found himself distracted by the various chores that presented themselves. By the time they were finished, the lines had eluded him. When he asked, Integra had merely replied, with a faint shade of pink on her cheeks, "It was just a silly little poem, Walter."

Secrets littered the distance between them.

"Walter, do you have something to say?"

"No, my lady."

"Shut the door as you leave, then," Integra said, and still, did not look up.

She was seated in the same chair as that evening.

And like then, Walter left with a sense of bereavement.

xx

xx

Tell me, if I caught you one day

And kissed the sole of your foot,

Wouldn't you limp a little then,

Afraid to crush my kiss?

\- Nichita Stănescu

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

NOTES

Prinț român - Romanian prince

Da - Yes

Sleep has eluded me. Oh God, I am exhausted. Next time, my dearest readers. Always, thank you so much, please know that your wonderful words are what keep me going!


	6. out of the blue

xx

xx

 **05.**

 **out of the blue**

xx

xx

When she next slept, it was dreamless. An airy slumber, so light that she did not realize she had succumbed until her hand hit the empty teacup beside her seat. The cup tumbled harmlessly to the carpeted floor, and she sat up from her slouched position, disoriented to see the windows aglow with scarlet.

 _Miss Hellsing, you've had a long nap._

There was a moment of eerily apathetic suspension in which nothing registered but the heaviness of the book in her lap and the softness of the carpet beneath her bare feet. She had shucked off her loafers a while ago. Integra combed away strands of hair from her face, adjusted her glasses, and mechanically gathered a stack of tomes and journals in her arms. It teetered as she shuffled to their respective shelves.

Sunset, again.

 _And I'm still,_ she thought, _here_.

She had not even hoped. It was simply an afterthought, that falling asleep once more might send her somewhere else. With the red slant of light rapidly turning blue and illuminating her crown coldly, it may as well be that she was doomed to repeat the same hour she had died. Perhaps she could fall asleep an infinite number of times and she would be delivered to an infinite number of worlds, and never know which one was real. She could be the dream of old Integra who was eternally slumbering, or it could be old Integra who was the dream.

 _That tale of the Chinese philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly. How did it go again?_

She slid the books to their places, the lower shelves first. Their spines were stiff.

They were not about history.

 _Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, and the breeze in his wings was very agreeable indeed._

A few remained, belonging to the higher shelves that required a ladder to reach. Integra propped it up and climbed. The ceiling of the library was quite high, and the texts most worn were situated at the top. On the rungs she peered down at the darkening room.

What liminal space. The very epitome of a twilight zone. The ungodliest of the ungodly hours. _How fitting for us,_ she mused. _That you and I died just as it rose and just as it set. Do you reckon, Count, if there was a chariot, I grasped its reins with the night at my wake so you could be brought back?_

She entertained herself with such odd ideas when she was alone.

 _Yet upon awakening he did not know._

"Are you going to jump?"

 _Was it Zhuangzi who had dreamt of being a butterfly?_

And now she was not alone.

"No," she replied.

"You looked like you were going to jump, and risk breaking your pretty neck."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'll sustain a sprain at the most." She replaced the last of the books.

He plucked it off. _Insufferable creature_.

"This is an anthology."

Integra shifted on the ladder for her gaze to meet his head. From her vantage point, he was rivulets of black. She draped an arm over the uppermost rung and pillowed her cheek on it as she watched him skim the text.

"An anthology of poetry," he said, "on _death_. My Master, are you trying to tell me something? It's not nice to tease. Ah, but you've been teasing me all day."

She had always watched him, as avidly as he watched her. Out of necessity, of course. A good master keeps an eye on her hound. But it was not only that.

When she began to watch him in her dreams, she knew.

It had never been only that.

He seemed unreachable. Oh, she was well aware that he was within range for her to tangle her fingers in his mane, if she so wished, yet in her dreams he had proven to be especially heedless. _Dreams_ was the word, because this was how they would start out, her evanescent manifestations of him. Upon this mortal threshold of not-quite-day and not-quite-night, doubt creeping into her mind on whether she had woken up at all, she was, in stark contrast to this morning, almost afraid to touch him.

 _Or was it the butterfly that had dreamt of being Zhuangzi?_

"Shall I read these to you? Let flow these stanzas from these dead lips? It will be awfully narcissistic of me."

"Are you real?" Integra asked instead.

She had not meant to say it out loud; yet there it was, her doubt, phrased and hanging in the air between them.

Alucard looked up. His eyes were incandescent in the dark.

"I imagine the great majority will say I am not."

"But I am not the majority," she said.

"You're certainly not," he agreed throatily.

"Then what I am asking is, are you real, to me?"

He let slip the anthology from his fingers. The gloved digits quested for the mystery before him. A mindless monster would have torn apart such a treat in its eagerness, but he was not a mindless monster, though it would have been easier and kinder for his existence if he was. With no expectations, no standards...and no pasts... If he was a beast for slaughter, he would not be as tormented.

"You are my Master, Integra. I am as real as you desire me to be."

His fingers landed on the rung next to her face and inched, spiderlike, to the wisps of mellow blonde hair framing it. "The difference between me and the monsters that lurk in children's closets is that, beyond the fatality of my bite, I am yours to banish without needing to turn on the lights." They crept closer. "Order me to the room you found me in, lock the door and swallow the key." Closer.

Integra smiled. It was melancholy in the shade of civic twilight. "I won't do that."

"Oh?"

"I might choke on the key."

"We can't have that." _Closer_. "Then shall I remove myself from this room to start with?"

"Decided, have you, that being amenable was the way to go?"

"I know I have vexed you today. I promise," he crooned, "I will behave."

The tips of his fingers, at last, brushed her face, near yet not touching her lips. Her eyes grew wide. Would she rebuke him?

She did not. She grabbed his hand. And lost her balance on the ladder. Alucard moved to intercept her and her back slammed into his chest.

His hand was still held in hers.

In the seconds he felt her warmth pressing against his cold heart the monster was consumed with a mutation of desire that transcended human lust or greed. His desire for his master could not be compartmentalized—at best it could be construed as a desire to be _hers_. He desired her for the things that made her _integral_ to him. _Integral, Integral, Integral, so aptly named_. For the way she reclined against him even after her feet landed on the carpet, never questioning her power over him, never as wary as she ought to be in the sanguine folds of his embrace. Brazenly, he nosed her hair.

She was staring solemnly at the seal on the back of his glove. When she traced the runes they flared and danced to her pulse. He buried his nose deeper. He kissed her crown. Eyes heavy-lidded, rivaling the blush of the enchantment he had loathed.

"You're a liar, Alucard," Integra said. "If you were as real as I desired you to be, you wouldn't have made me wait."

"Wait for what, my Master?"

She faced him, her eyes inflicted with _that something_...

"For you to turn on the lights."

Alucard blinked.

Integra dropped his hand unceremoniously. "Prove to me you're real by remaining after you do," she mocked.

"So you _do_ want me."

"I'm aware it's time for our lesson, you ridiculous bat." She plopped into her chair. "Lights, Alucard."

He laughed, and simpering, glided to the armchair opposite her. Behind him his shadows flipped the switch on, scurrying away once the overhead fluorescent lights beamed down on them. Alucard crossed his legs and laced his fingers. "Funny thing about that. I was roused by Walter throwing a blood bag at me, and he said you'd gone and fired all the tutors."

"Yes, congratulations," she drawled. "You're officially the only 'tutor' left."

"Do I get a raise?" he asked dryly. "I will not ask you why; it seems that as of this day you're resolved to pave your own path, and who am I to deter my Master's whims?" She lifted a brow. He mirrored her smugly. "Here now is my _finesse_ , Integra."

"Lovely. But as it happens, you don't get a raise," Integra idly studied her bare toes, "and you don't get to continue your lessons either. I have waited," she glanced at the clock, "six hours to tell you this in person."

His smile fell. " _Don't get to continue_ —"

"I no longer require your services."

Those words combined into that exact sentence struck him to such an irrational degree that he surprised himself. He shot up with enough force to knock back the massive armchair. Integra's demeanor was unaffected, having anticipated an outburst.

"Master," Alucard said, relatively calmly, "you have yet to conquer the language."

"Be that as it may, I don't need you to teach it to me anymore. I can read it and write it and hold a conversation with you, and that had been its purpose to begin with." She regarded him neutrally. "You're not sulking, are you?"

"My Master." Where was this desperation coming from? She chose not to continue with their Romanian lessons. Fine. That was her prerogative. It had been her decision to commence them and it was her decision to cease them. But out of the blue, and so callously? Alucard struggled to school his features. "Integra, what else will I occupy myself with to slake these stagnant nights?"

"Read to me."

His hair spindled around him, the nuisance.

"Pick that book up," Integra pointed to the anthology lying on the floor. "Read something to me." She smirked at his dumbfounded expression. "What's the matter, Alucard? It was you who offered."

Well. _Well_.

"And pick your chair up while you're at it. Really, must you be so clamorous?"

His shoulders relaxed—he had not even realized they were tense. Sibilant laughter erupted from somewhere in the nadir of his being, a place he did not wish to contemplate. Alucard masked the fragility of his mirth. "Touché. This new side of yours has me off-balance, Integra. How tempted I find myself..."

"The _book_."

He bowed. "This is a severance pay I will accept with utmost _pleasure_ ," he purred.

The vampire bodily moved to retrieve the book this time, while his shadows righted the chair. He did not notice, as the hem of his coat wafted past her, the way Integra looked out the window. The day had vanished for good. And her eyes in the encroaching night were bright and sharp and the pinnacles of vindication.

Her Count put it best.

She would pave her own path.

"'The Funeral.'"

Integra jumped when she heard his voice from below. She twisted and found Alucard sprawled against the side of her seat, one leg bent and the anthology open on it.

"What are you doing here? Go back to your own chair," she said, unimpressed.

"Better acoustics, my Master," he quipped. What bullshit.

But she let it slide, and his velvet voice floated up to her ear.

 _"Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm_

 _Nor question much_

 _That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm..."_

The funeral. Her funeral. Her funeral would have had—daisies. Not the lilies she had left on many, many graves, because Seras would be there and the silly girl loved daisies and how they grew everywhere, how they were the color of eggs and ducks and stars. Maybe Penwood would have stammered and Islands clucked his tongue, saying daisies were too common, but Walsh would have sucked on his pipe and croaked he would like daisies at _his_ funeral because he was bloody sick of lilies. And her silly, darling girl would have not said a word, would have stood there in the blistering sun while some poor sap droned his eulogy, and she would have— _don't cry, Seras_ —

That image, she kissed goodbye.

"Count."

Alucard stopped. His old title again. That was twice today.

"Yes?"

"Your kind roams the earth, seeking war."

She perched an elbow on the armrest next to his head, and her hair spilled over it. "If the nights ahead of us continued like this, Count. If we were bound to spend our evenings reading poetry and taking out the occasional trash, with no war on the horizon, tell me, would that be too much for you?"

"Too much boredom, Integra?" Alucard toyed with the curled ends of her otherwise straight hair. "I'm no stranger to boredom. I am used to irreducible stretches of time passing by without the backdrop of death throes...those collective gasps of men and women as their bowels are spilled and their children are burned...as their land is transformed into a sea of ashes." He wound a curl around his wrist. It tautened. "War is a performance and I await it, as you humans do the season's opera. It wouldn't be quite as fresh if every night was a rendition of 'Walkürenritt,' now would it?"

 _Ride of the Valkyries_. Integra pursed her lips. "But?"

"But," he murmured. "Those voids, I always sought to compensate, if not with war, then with pursuing something else."

"Something else," she said. It was not a question.

"Something else," he said. It was an answer.

Before, Integra had only ever thought that dwelling on the what-ifs was pointless. It was like crying over the events set in stone, as if enough tears would efface them; pure folly. Yet it was all she could do now. All she could do, to rearrange them and unravel their threads, split their ends. And upon one, red, forbidden thread she thought that if there had been no war she would have inevitably taken this monster, this man with his pit of depravities and sins, into her heart. Let him kiss the sole of her foot.

And she would have limped.

"Finish reading," she ordered.

He obeyed. His wrist caught in the tendril of his master.

 _"So 'tis some bravery,_

 _That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you."_

"Ahem."

Walter was at the door, facial muscles vaguely strained. "Your supper, my lady."

"Thank you, Walter. I'll be down shortly."

The butler nodded curtly and left.

Alucard stretched his neck over the armrest. "The Angel never likes it when I'm alone with you. I wonder why." He knew exactly why, and he was gloating. "Does he think I'll paint the walls red again while you're with me? He'll be such a delight when I tell him I've been fired, only to be redeemed as your personal minstrel."

"Don't aggravate Walter, Alucard," Integra sighed.

"Whyever not? Who else in this house will threaten me with dismemberment and have the spine to go through with it?"

Integra disentangled her hair from his wrist and gave him a withering look. "You idiot."

 _You blind idiot._

She made to stand, and remembered she had taken off her shoes. He was there, holding one up, baiting her with a self-satisfied curve at the corner of his mouth. Integra did not remove her gaze from him. Staring directly into those carnivorous orbs, the pupils of which were the hue of clotted blood, she granted him her foot. He slipped the shoe back on, then the other, tickling her flesh ever so slightly.

"Integra, was your question because of the war you dreamt?" he asked. "Were you afraid of it?"

She leaned into him. She whispered in his ear.

"I am not afraid of dreams."

Walter pulled out a chair for her when they arrived at the dining room. The table appeared to be divided into parts lit and unlit, a goblet of blood on the latter, a lonesome picture on its own. The vampire seated himself nonetheless, either unaware or uncaring.

The butler bowed. "Dinner is served."

"Walter, won't you join me?" Integra said.

Walter glanced at her quickly. He smiled. "Thank you, my lady, but I was planning to sup later in my quarters."

"No, join me. There's more than enough." Integra pushed a basket of rolls toward him. "It's been a while since we had a meal together, hasn't it? Like old times."

Walter took the basket. His face softened, and he chuckled. "How could I refuse."

Integra cut into her steak.

Alucard downed his blood.

Walter broke his bread.

The Master, the Servant, and the Butler ate quietly.

xx

xx

The day and the night alternate without pause.

It was the same. It would remain the same until the end of time, for as long as the earth revolved around the sun. Every night and every morning the blue hour was the precipice, and in the identical way venturing along the edge of a precipice evoked the sense of unreality, waking up at this hour evoked the sense of fantasy. Miss Integral Hellsing did not, however, confuse herself now in the manner she had done in the library before her vampire had swept her out of her haze with his touch. Her mind was clear. Alarmingly clear.

Her sleep had been, yet again, dreamless.

She chose a piece of clothing from her wardrobe. It was a summer dress, black. Sensible. Suitable for where she was going. She donned it and crossed to her vanity. The mirror had been refitted, and would be spared, for she did not seize it between panicked hands. Miss Hellsing steadily and diligently combed her hair and polished her glasses. She put them on, and then opened a drawer.

It held a gun.

Again, sensible.

She strapped it to her leg. Integral Hellsing was never without a weapon.

At this hour no one was awake. Not her butler, who began his duties an hour later. Not her vampire, who retired to his coffin before the sun emerged. That had been what she desired. She wished no one to accompany her for this. Old habits die hard, after all, and she had been doing things herself for thirty long years.

Integra walked out of her room. She went downstairs, past the entrance hall, past the dewy grounds, and found herself at the gates.

The soldier standing guard was understandably befuddled when he saw his young boss, of all people, outside at this hour unescorted. The summer dawn was muggy and he was one of the few men on duty at Hellsing Manor during these uneventful months. For a moment he wondered if he had dozed off, but there was no mistaking the authority in the girl's blue eyes as she assessed him from head to toe and seemingly came to a conclusion.

"What's your name, soldier?"

He was even more perplexed. "You know my name, Miss Hellsing."

She narrowed her eyes. "Is that your answer?"

The soldier snapped into a salute at her tone. "No, Miss Hellsing. Dylan Basbanes, Miss Hellsing."

She tutted. But he would do. "Dylan. I need you to do something for me."

"Miss Hellsing?"

"Go fetch the car," Integra said. "You're going to drive me somewhere."

xx

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NOTES

"Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly" - The well-known image of Zhuangzi wondering if he was a man who dreamed of being a butterfly illustrates that the distinction between waking and dreaming is another false dichotomy. If one distinguishes them, how can one tell if one is now dreaming or awake? (Wikipedia)

"The Funeral" by John Donne.

"Walkürenritt (Ride of the Valkyries)" from Richard Wagner's opera _Die Walküre_.

Integra! What are you up to?

Fluff. I needed fluff. And it never is _Hellsing_ if the fluff isn't served with a dash of war and lewdness. And considering what I have planned for the next chapter, you all are going to need to fluff yourselves up with lots and lots of fluff.

Thank you all for your feedback! You all are such stars. I'm so happy you like the poem I chose for Alucard and Integra last chapter. I speak not a stitch of Romanian, but when I discovered that poem I was like, oh? Oh! And I had to use it, of course. I actually preferred poetry when I was in college so understand you'll be seeing poems here and there in my stories. Along with music, they are one of my greatest muses.

So I hope you are contented for now. Until next time, starlit people!


	7. déjà vu

_The light, said to bring eras after eras of peace,_

 _Also casts a shadow, in which tragic wars are constantly taking place._

 _The lined-up funeral attendees, all taciturn and indifferent,_

 _Can do nothing more than to keep walking in the soaking rain..._

\- Sound Horizon, "Honoo (Flame)"

xx

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 **06.**

 **d** **é** **j** **à** **vu**

xx

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Her profession made her callous. That once upon a time she had been a soft-fleshed thing, a little romantic who fancied a knight atop a white horse, seemed in and of itself a fairy tale. Here was a horror story, wherein lives had dissolved into numbers.

She was picking her way through the outskirts of London, on the hunt for straggler ghouls. It was a grueling task, yet it proved to be a distraction from ruminating on her loss. Her many losses. Among those, she barely felt the phantom pain in her vacant left socket. If her one-sided sight caused her to stumble over rubble, she did not curse out loud. Words had become cumbersome in her mouth. What was the point, she thought, of shouting herself hoarse, when nothing would come out of it?

"I've scouted the perimeters, Master. No ghoul in sight or smell."

Integra smiled thinly. "Good work."

Seras smiled back tiredly. "Just doing my job."

Yes. As the last of Hellsing, this was her—their—duty.

Three weeks. It was three weeks after the war, and London was in suspended decay. It was quicker to list the living than the dead and the missing. Aid was slow to arrive and always lacking. The stench of rust seemed permanent. In a pitiful amount of time she had had to train what remained of the Army in the basics of extermination, even though it would get them killed, even though Seras alone would be more efficient. Because it was their duty. Mankind's desire to regain a sense of normalcy knew no bounds, and people clung to their roles, albeit the society in which they had functioned was hanging by a hair. And so soldiers marched on, doctors treated the wounded, journalists braved the zone, and two women, a human and a vampire, walked the night armed.

"We should head back," Seras said. "It's going to rain."

Integra took a deep breath. The air was damp and earthy. It smelled like the London she remembered. She produced a cigar and lit it, and smoke mimicked the clouds above.

A single streetlamp was standing nearby, and was on, a break in the gloom. Integra reclined against it. Her hair was lit golden.

"Yes," she replied, with little enthusiasm. "Back home."

 _Back to the burial ground._

"Master Integra," Seras started sternly. She was actually wagging her finger. "You need your rest. Doctor's orders!"

"I take no orders but from the Queen," Integra deadpanned.

"Stress can affect your wound, you know," Seras ploughed on, as if she had not heard. She was too aware at this point that her boss was the worst patient _ever._ Clearing her throat, she deepened her voice. " _Psychological stress can have a substantial and clinically relevant impact on wound repair. Physiological stress responses can directly influence wound healing processes_." Seras nodded smartly, and added in her normal voice, "That's what Dr. Trevelyan said, verbatim."

"Aren't you a right little nurse," Integra muttered. "You should have considered a medical career, or childcare, seeing as you're becoming more and more like a mother hen each day."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Ridiculous girl."

Seras beamed.

These banters they shared were their only refreshments.

Integra was not going to budge without having had her smoke, so Seras pressed her back to the abandoned building beside the light, her shadow arm swirling. She could hear the pleasant buzz of Pip's thoughts in the back of her head. He was dormant for now, yet he would emerge if she needed him.

She clamped her red eyes shut, savoring the glow of her beloved's soul.

"I don't like children."

It sounded like something Integra would say, but it was, in fact, Seras.

Integra blinked her one eye slowly.

"I grew up in orphanages, Master Integra. And orphanages, they don't have much to offer. Crowded. Always noisy. I hated it." Seras said this tonelessly. "The other kids called me unlucky. The adults might have too, behind my back. They never really understood." She took a cursory glance down the street. "Come to think of it, this street is near one of the places I stayed in."

Integra was aware that Seras had moved from institution to institution, yet this was the first the girl was telling her about her experiences.

"How old were you when you stayed here?"

"Twelve."

"Twelve," Integra murmured, and said nothing more.

A droplet of water landed on Seras' nose, and she squeaked. "It's raining!"

Integra stretched out an empty hand. So it was.

"Oh, I really don't like flying in the rain..."

Rain flowed to the sea and rose to the air and formed clouds, which rained again, over and over and over. The world still turned. Integra closed her palm. "Then let's go home before it falls harder, Seras."

"Yes, Sir!"

They had done this so many times, it had become routine. Seras preferred that she be sure of Integra's safety, and Integra preferred that Seras be at her side, where she could keep an eye on her, or so she said. They neither questioned nor found inconvenient the other's constant presence. It was only natural. They strove to fill the vacuum their men had left, which meant most nights Integra was sleepless and most days Seras was up, the vampire made bagged tea and the human microwaved bagged blood, and they handed the liquids to their respective consumers. The scent of blood under their noses, dirt on their faces and sand in their eyes, ashes underfoot, screams in their ears.

They sipped quietly.

Integra pushed herself off the post. Seras came forward, shadows extending, ready to take off.

It was then that Seras' eyes flashed.

The Draculina snapped her head toward the dark of the street far beyond the periphery of the lamplight.

"There's something there."

Integra expelled smoke. "You said there weren't any ghouls."

"That's not a ghoul. That's...a human..."

A bent shape came limping toward them until, gradually, Integra could make out the tattered husk of what once might have been a charming man in his forties. He was a civilian. She knew without asking that he was by the look on his face, of despair and displacement, the same as the one worn by millions of others. He gazed at them from the opposite side of a haze both imaginary and wrought by rain.

"Margaret? Claire?"

 _Who?_ Seras planted herself in front of Integra and faced the man. "Don't move! State your business!"

"Margaret. Claire. My wife. My daughter. Have you seen them? They were supposed to come home after a trip to Borough Market."

Integra shut her eye and squeezed the cigar in her hand.

Seras did not know what to say. "I..." She paused. The vital signs she could read from the man were off. Along with the obvious damage to his mental state, he was... "Sir, you're injured."

The man had a bullet stuck in his ribs. Too proximate to his lung. He was bleeding internally. He was dying.

"You need medical—"

"They were supposed to come home." The man's words were feverish. "Come home and we were supposed to have dinner. But then things appeared. Zepps in the sky. I thought, some air show. Then there were—screams—people dying—horrors—the news was cut off—but I saw them— _monsters_ —"

"Sir, you need medical attention," Seras said steadily. Her shadow arm had reduced in size, attempting to be as inconspicuous as possible. "Let me help you to the nearest—"

"I didn't tell Margaret and Claire I love them before they left. They were supposed to come home." The man ineffectively dragged his wasting body toward them. "Can you tell them I love them?"

The rain was gaining in volume. Seras clenched her jaw. Behind her, Integra raised her face to the lachrymose sky.

"They were supposed to come home." The man extended a shaking hand. "Let's go home, girls—"

Seras made to stop him. "We're not—"

Then the man saw her eyes, and screamed.

 _"MONSTER!"_

Seras stiffened.

"That's right," she said finally. "But I'm not the one who destroyed London. Sir, please, let me help you."

But the man was screaming with the last remainder of his vitality and from somewhere between the folds of his torn and bloodstained clothes he pulled out a gun. _"I'll kill you!"_

"Wait—"

A shot rang out in the rainy night.

Yet the man had not even touched the trigger.

Seras stared as the man slid to the puddling ground, gun discarded with a wet clatter. She turned.

Integra lowered her arm.

"Master."

"He would have died anyway," she said.

Seras opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked back at the man. His eyes were glazed over. It had been an instant death. Curious, though, how his expression was not one of shock or pain, but of joy. His lips were contorted into a word.

Perhaps it had been "Margaret."

Her head was buzzing; Pip was alert and was asking what the fuck had just happened. She tuned him out gently.

When she refocused, Integra was walking away.

"Master!"

She sheathed her gun and threw aside her useless cigar. "What's wrong, Police Girl? I thought you'd outgrown this."

"He was—"

"He was human," Integra finished for her, "and he was delirious, and he was dying. He aimed a weapon at you, and thereby established himself as an enemy. The merciful thing to do, if you so wanted to act out of your bleeding heart, was to send him to his family."

"I'm sorry," Seras whispered. "But I couldn't."

Integra ripped off her likewise useless glasses. What had started out as a drizzle was now a downpour, and her hair and coat were soaked, not that she particularly cared. She left Seras and the corpse under the streetlamp, took shelter beneath the eaves of a ramshackle storefront and watched, with poor eyesight, the drops that fell in desynchronization with the rain.

Seras came not long after. She stood next to Integra and twisted her shadow arm in a monstrous version of handwringing. There was only the pitter-patter for a while.

"I wanted to protect people."

Seras smiled as she spoke. "It was all I wanted to do. I used to beat up the school bullies until they cried to the teachers that _I_ was bullying _them_."

"I can only imagine," Integra remarked sarcastically, and the girl laughed.

"I believed the best thing I could do in order to protect people was to become a police officer. The adults at the orphanage thought I was trying to follow in my father's footsteps, but it was more than that. I wanted to do the right thing. Even..." Seras swallowed. "Even if it got me killed. Master Integra, I knew all those things you said. But I couldn't kill him. I've drank blood. I've accepted that I'm a monster. But I'm not going to let it be my sole definer, like it was for—for Master. I had to try to save that man. At least _try_. If I didn't, what would be my limit?"

"There arrives a point where there is no choice but to have limits broken," Integra said. "You know this."

"Does it get better?"

"It gets easier," she said.

Seras hugged herself. "I still have a lot to learn."

Integra glanced sideways at her. She sighed. "Come here."

Seras did not hesitate to bury her face in the woman's sodden coat. Integra curled her arms around the vampire. They reflected, to the pluvial white noise, on those limits already broken. Seras did not cry, yet she did close her bright red eyes, and found solace in the life being emitted from her master.

Integra leaned into her ear. "The ones I kill, I make sure they leave me with little alternative. That doesn't make it better, but it does make it easier."

Seras nodded.

"I will not let _anyone_ —even a dying man—hurt one of mine again," Integra vowed. "No matter how invincible she may be."

The war had heavily revised her perception of invincibility.

"I won't trouble you again, Master," Seras promised.

"I'll hold you to that."

xx

xx

"Miss Hellsing, we have arrived."

Integra did not reply to the unnecessary announcement. She had recognized the street they drove past, though it was, unsurprisingly, very different from what she remembered. Shutters were down; the majority of London was not yet awake at this hour to greet the dove morning. When she caught sight of the city in its former dignity, standing old and proud as it had before the war that was not a war but a potbellied man's killing spree, she had turned from the window. Her dress was indeed fitting.

"It looks like it's going to rain."

"Park somewhere unobtrusive," she told the driver.

"Yes, Miss Hellsing." Dylan Basbanes, her designated scapegoat, felt a drop of sweat roll down his temple. This was not a destination he could have dreamt up when his boss had given him directions to the opposite end of London.

"With all due respect, is Mr. Dornez aware of this trip?"

Really, she had forgotten how annoying it was being this age. Every other person questioned her. "That's of no concern to you," Integra warned. "Do you need reminding, Dylan, that you work for me and not Mr. Dornez?"

"No, Miss Hellsing," the soldier said hastily. "I apologize for my indiscretion."

The car turned at a sign.

 _Hortense Children's Home,_ it read.

She got out and assessed the property. It was large, hushed and—perhaps it was the weather, perhaps it was her preconception—dreary. Utterly dreary and _how utterly stereotypical_ , she scoffed. Yet attempting to alienate her bias did nothing, because the fact remained that this was a place Seras had hated.

The gates were not locked. If it was her intention, she could stride in and ask for the matron or whoever was in charge here.

"Wait here, Dylan," Integra instructed. "I won't be long. This is merely—merely a survey." She kept telling herself that.

The young man looked at her uncertainly. "As you say, Miss Hellsing."

Integra walked. The air was difficult to breathe in. Was it the moisture, or was it the anticipation of whom she would meet that was smothering her?

 _This is merely a survey_.

Old Integra laughed. _Keep telling yourself that_.

Seras, surely, was some kind of miracle, to have retained a heart of gold after such a childhood. On that night in Badrick, she had asked Alucard why he had turned the girl, and he had replied, in his characteristic exceedingly unhelpful way, " _Why indeed. Perhaps your human capriciousness has rubbed off on me._ " Later, at the curtain call of that mechanically puppeteered folly of a war, she had realized it had been that _capriciousness_ which had salvaged them. In the form of Seras Victoria, that girl with the strange name, part goddess and part queen.

There was a refrain which played in her mind as she rounded the corner of the orphanage situated in the outskirts of London, a few minutes from the street where, once upon a time, she and Seras had waited for the rain to subside. Seras had hummed this tune, some premillennial ballad. Integra's memory reprised it, but music had never been her strong suit and she came up with blanks. It may have gone something like this, something like—

 _...there, look through the trees...the sun always shines, always on time..._

Something like—

" _...rest on your knees...and in a prayer..._ "

Integra stopped in her tracks.

The beginning of a summer shower hit her head, and her eyes fluttered. And then they were wide open, and were fixed before her. The water dripped down her brow and lingered upon her cheeks as she stood rooted to the darkening pavement, unblinking.

The girl humming did not look up.

" _...follow me there_."

The girl sitting on the pavement, with her face hidden behind her drawn knees, did not start at the change in the weather. She simply made herself smaller, as if she wished to disappear along with the raindrops splashing at her feet. Her short yellow hair was dull and disheveled. She must have not had enough sleep. Almost, the air that hung about her was tangible. Yet through everything there sounded from her an absent sort of singing, which filled in the blanks of the same song that had been playing in Integra's head.

Her darling girl loved music. She loved to hum. She loved to sing.

And she had loved that girl.

From lips that parted on their own escaped, " _Seras_."

The singing broke off. The blonde head lifted.

Blue eyes. Not red.

Watery tears. Not bloody.

Silence.

She wiped at her runny face and regarded her with both suspicion and curiosity. She was tense. Her hands were balled into fists. Integra felt her heart split.

Outwardly, she smiled. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

Seras stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"It's better to cry in the rain." Integra stretched out a hand to catch the fall. "You feel less alone that way."

The girl was more curious now than wary. She rose to her feet, wavering.

She might have said something if Dylan had not chosen that moment to show up with an umbrella.

"Miss Hellsing!"

His sudden appearance frightened Seras. She stumbled backward and then ran.

"Wait!" Integra called, but the girl vanished into the trees at the back of the orphanage. She rounded on the quailing soldier. "I ordered you to wait with the car!"

"Forgive me, Miss Hellsing," he pleaded. "I only meant to bring you your umbrella."

Integra pinched the bridge of her nose and composed herself. "Forget it! Go to the car, Dylan, stay there and for the bloody good of your soul do _not_ make me repeat myself again. Am I understood?"

"Understood!" Dylan saluted. When had the young lady gotten so _scary?_

Integra ran after Seras. The rain, the rain, the rain, it had picked up its pace, and she had to squint through the drops impeding her vision for a hint of yellow. _Seras, Seras, come back. You'll catch a cold_. Her vampire was human. Just two nights ago, the Draculina whose bloody tears she had swept was now a human girl. The irony of fate was not lost on her. Her hands were wet and clammy, like yesterday, like the day before, when she had held that pale face in her cooling grasp and said goodbye. _Seras, Seras, I won't leave you again. I won't leave you here._

 _This time, let me take care of you._

"Seras!" She spun left and right, clawing her hair out of the way when it stuck to her glasses. "Seras!"

What answered her was not a hint of yellow but a cry.

Integra heard it above the din of falling rain and rustling leaves. It was loud and growing louder still. She quickened toward it, worry constricting her. The cry did not sound normal. Was Seras hurt? It seemed that countless trees were flanking her path until, at last, she found her.

Her blood curdled.

Seras was not alone. There was a man with her and he was—

It was times like this when every inch of her being befitted her epithet, when every bit of warmth froze into ice and sharpened into steel poised to maim the condemned's vitals.

 _The_ iron maiden _is an execution device_ —

"Release her."

— _by which one suffers an excruciating death_.

The molester paused in his attempt to tear off Seras' shirt.

"Whatchu on about, eh? What's another pretty thing doin' in the woods?" He drunkenly shook Seras, whose mouth he was covering. "You her friend? Her sister? That orphanage there sure has tasty 'uns. This must be my lucky day!"

Seras stared at her over the dirty hand with wide and terrified eyes.

Integra curled her lips cruelly. " _Lucky_."

Her rage was a quiet, white-hot thing, simultaneously blinding and terribly focused. Her gun was in her grip before she even acknowledged it. "I said, release her."

The man guffawed at the sight of the weapon. "Y'know how to use that thing? Little girls shouldn't play with men's toys. Now I've another toy here you can—"

She fired.

The bullet grazed one of his ears, lopping a chunk of it off, and the man screamed. Seras seized the chance to rip her teeth into his hand and, when the piece of filth wrenched away with a fresher howl, extricated herself from his hold. Profanities polluted the torrent.

Seras darted behind Integra. She clung to her, clutching the fabric of her dress. Integra turned her head over her shoulder.

"Close your eyes," she said softly.

Seras shook her head.

"You want to watch?"

She nodded. Her eyes were hard and aligned with the barrel trained on her assaulter.

Her grip tightened on her gun, yet she did not press further. Integra returned her attention to the potential rapist.

" _What the fuck? You fucking cunts, I'm gonna fucking rip your_ _—_ "

She fired once more.

The bullet hit its mark between his legs.

The resulting scream reached a pitch where it was rendered inaudible. The man collapsed to the ground, thrashing, grabbing futilely at the gore that became indistinguishable from the mud.

Slowly, Integra lowered her arm.

The whimper that floated from behind her prompted her to drop her gun and swivel around. Her gaze flew wildly over Seras for an injury of any kind. Her shirt was rumpled, but there were none external as far as she could see. Yet she was convulsing so badly that her breaths escaped in ragged bursts. Integra cupped her face.

"There now. It's alright," she whispered. "He can't hurt you anymore."

Tears leaked out of blue eyes. Fragile eyes. Mixing with the rain, trickling between Integra's fingers.

"They can't hurt you anymore. No one can hurt you anymore. I won't allow it." She smiled. "You're a strong girl, aren't you?"

Seras hiccupped.

"Let it all out."

And with a sob she buried her face into Integra's chest, and bawled her heart out.

"Seras." Integra cradled the girl. _Seras, Seras, did you cry like this when I left? Forgive me. Forgive me_. "Forgive me, Seras."

Seras spoke. Her voice was full of wonder.

"How do you know my name?"

She might have told her a story.

That once upon a time there had been an exceptionally star-crossed girl, who had been fortunate enough to achieve her dream at an early age, but had been unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of a vampire extermination, and had died, and had risen as a vampire herself. That she had fought in a war, fallen in love, lost and gained, and for thirty long years afterward had waltzed into her room every morning, humming a tune off-key, with an obnoxious greeting...

 _You and I have known each other for a very long time._

What she said was, "We met once in a dream."

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NOTES

Sound Horizon, "Honoo (Flame)." Translation via Anime Lyrics dot Com.

Jean-Philippe Gouin and Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, "The Impact of Psychological Stress on Wound Healing: Methods and Mechanisms."

The Connells, "Lay Me Down."

I did warn you!

Dreadfully sorry for the wait. As you might be able to imagine, this one was a monster. At this point I am just so glad I got it out. Thank you so much for your patience, and your words of kindness and encouragement! I live off them, you must know. But, whew, we do need something sweet to flush out this melancholy, don't we? Cross your fingers for a lighter installment next time, and I may show you mercy! Until then. Happy October, everyone!


	8. a meager substitute

xx

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 **07.**

 **a meager substitute**

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The doors of the crypt burst open with a bang.

"Alucard!"

The butler marched into the large, bleak chamber and up to the large, black coffin in center. He gave it a light kick, a deed only he, other than the master of the house, dared to commit. "Get up, or I'll scruff up this precious box of yours."

" _You'll lose your foot_."

The lid of the coffin moved an inch to the side. Walter could hear scuttles, produced by creatures of many legs, and whispers from within its depths. A single crimson eye glared at him. " _Angel_ ," the owner of the eye said in his portentous velvet tone, "there is _much_ I let you off from, but disturbing my rest is cutting it close."

"I'll bloody cut your head off while I'm at it," Walter snapped. "Where's Integra?"

"Where's Integra?" Alucard repeated. The situation became less irritating and more ludicrous. "Is this a joke, or have you actually gone senile? Where would Integra be if not—"

Her blood in his veins tugged at him.

He followed it. Followed it out of the manor, across the city, to the opposite side of the river.

 _Not here_.

Integra was not here.

"I wouldn't be down here at seven in the bloody morning even if I'd planned the greatest prank of my life." Walter nudged the lid with his foot. "For God's sake, get up."

It slid off, not because Walter's insistence had any leverage on Alucard, but because the vampire himself was perturbed, though his face was devoid of any sign of it. The lining of the coffin was satin; to the human perception there was nothing to suggest that it contained substances beyond silk. He sat up. His hair melded into the shadows and there it crimped agitatedly.

"She wasn't in her room— _again_ —but this time she'd left a note—"

Twice in a row the morning tranquility was shattered by his master, his master who held secrets, who had become overnight a mystery to him and even to the butler who had known her since birth. _Curious, curious, curious, and a monster does love curiosities. My Master, you shouldn't tempt me so._

"Well, she's not dead."

"Alucard!"

"Why the fuss?" He slung his arms over the walls of his box. "She must have had some business to take care of."

"Business at the crack of dawn, in God knows where, without mentioning a word of it beforehand? By herself? Does this sound normal for her to you?"

"I wasn't aware there was a standard of normalcy in this house," Alucard said, mimicking Integra's answer to his similar question yesterday. "My Master is in that period of her youth when humans get up to all sorts of shenanigans; in fact, I remember you at this age most fondly."

Walter scowled.

"You should consider it fortunate that all she's doing is acting on her wanderlust, out of the many _lusts_ ," he purred, "available."

Walter chose to ignore the nuance. "Yes, along with breaking into tears and firing her tutors," he muttered.

"My dear Master is being unpredictable. How lovely. I love unpredictable." Alucard licked his fangs.

Walter glanced sharply at the vampire as he lifted himself out of his last domain. The red of his eyes was as unnervingly lucent as ever, and when he drew himself to his full height, the hunter's instinct twanged. Alucard had a beautiful head and it would look so much better on the floor, bleeding.

"So you have tickled this sleeping dragon to see our maiden back in her tower," Alucard drawled. "Shall I go and snatch her up?"

"I'd appreciate it if you would desist from speaking of her with such frivolity," Walter said, unamused. "You know where she is, just bring her back safely. Her note said she would be back before breakfast but it's already—"

"Really, Walter. You used to be more fun than this." Alucard conjured his hat and put it on as he lumbered past him.

It was when his back was to him that Alucard suddenly turned and pinned his toxic gaze on his old partner.

"You've mellowed quite a bit, haven't you, Angel of Death?" he murmured. "The occasional bout of coarseness like the one just now notwithstanding, you're the quintessential English gentleman. Yet I do wonder." Alucard cocked his head. "What goes on beneath that facade?"

Walter arched a brow. "Facade?"

"We are juvenile at heart, as Integra said. And sometimes I wonder." Shadows fluctuated in the background. "Is the proud Reaper of the battlefield content to be the old dog fetching newspapers?"

Walter merely smiled. "I could ask the same of you."

Alucard laughed. "As if I have a choice!"

"But I know you take delight in that," Walter shrugged. "We keep our boundaries as servants of this house and serve our lady to the end of our days. That is the entirety of our existence." He matched Alucard's gaze. "For we are only ever _dogs_ , as you've put it, and dogs can be weapons and protectors and even called family members, but in the end will never amount to more."

He framed each word deliberately.

 _Never amount to more_.

Alucard's lips curved up without mirth. "Well phrased."

Walter clapped him on the shoulder. "Best leave now. It's raining and I don't want her to catch a cold."

He pretended not to notice how still the vampire was, how silent he had gone, when usually he would have complained about the prospect of getting wet. He left him there in his hollow and climbed up the stairs.

In the kitchen there was a drawer full of knives. The sharpest were in the front, the dullest in the back. And no matter how often Walter whetted the ones in the back, they never seemed to serve as precisely as the ones in the front. They were old knives; worn, decrepit, useless.

His greatest fear was that one day Integra would look at him the way he looked at those knives. He knew she would never, yet his fear was not to be assuaged by rationality and gnawed on him, with many teeth, not unlike those of the monster he had left. _Bastard_. Asking those kinds of questions. The bloody wanker needed to be reminded of his place and he would make sure he stayed there. Walter kicked the door to the basement shut and slouched against it, rubbing his temples.

 _Hypocrite_.

"I'm..." Could he deny it?

 _Hypocrite_.

Could he?

 _Hypocrite_.

A bitter laugh tore from him.

The master was not the only person fettered by nightmares. The vampire was. The butler was. Every single living and _un_ living thing in this accursed household.

And his, his were a terror he had started fifty years ago.

xx

xx

"We met in a dream?" Seras asked. "Really?"

The rain had slowed but was not stopping. Integra shielded her from the drops that fell fat and cold from the cusps of leaves above. How strange. She was so small. So warm. She could feel her heartbeats. This little girl was Seras, who had her chin on her chest and was peering up at her with blue eyes alight with the beginnings of trust. Integra held fast to that light.

"Really."

"But how come I don't remember you?"

"Oh, it was a fleeting dream," Integra said.

"What did we do?"

"We—" _Survived_. "We played together." She chuckled. "You had daisies in your hair."

She was recollecting a spring morning when Seras had barged into her office with a bunch of daisies, some in her hair, indignant that the gardener had been throwing them out as weeds. " _Can you believe it? It's an outrage, Master Integra! Here, see? I rescued the lot. Let me put them in a vase_."

 _Which is a dream now, a mere dream_.

"Oh." Seras quieted. "I like daisies. They're my favorite." She grew thoughtful. She looked down for a while, until it appeared she had come to a decision. She looked back up, and any and all tentativeness was gone from her eyes.

"Thank you," she said, suddenly shy.

Integra tightened her embrace.

"You're welcome."

The girl was brimming with curiosity. "Why—why did you ask me to forgive you earlier?"

 _I left you, and I have nothing to show for it._

Her mouth said, "If you hadn't been startled, you wouldn't have run into that _filth_."

Seras shook her head. "That man, he's been here before," she mumbled. "I heard some of the girls talking about him. They told Mr. Carter there was a creep lurking in the woods but," her voice harshened, "he only said they shouldn't make things up."

"And this Mr. Carter, he's the head of the orphanage?"

Seras nodded.

Integra fumed. Fucking incompetent birdbrains parading as heads and endangering the people they were supposed to care for because they _just did not care_. She abhorred these types.

Seras fidgeted in her arms.

"Are you like—like an angel?"

Integra blinked.

Seras ducked, blushing. "It's just—you came out of nowhere and—you're so pretty—"

She was working herself up into a flurry of stammers that Integra knew well. Ignoring her continuously smarting heart, she took a step back and spread out her arms.

"I certainly don't think angels are supposed to be this bedraggled," she said, and Seras let out a tiny giggle.

"You saved me," the child said.

 _And you, you have_...

She smiled wanly. "I'm neither an angel nor much of a savior. I'm simply, Integra."

"Integra," Seras pronounced. Carefully, without familiarity, without recognition, yet with the shine that effuses in a person's aura when she realizes she has found a kindred spirit. It was, thought Integra, enough. For her, for now, it was enough.

The rain, it seeped into her black dress, seeped into her very bones. They rattled, not only because of the chill, but also because the air around them chose that moment to pressurize.

She felt rather than saw her servant emerge out of the trees behind her. For she was watching Seras, the way the blush fled from her cheeks and her eyes hardened with hostility in a transition so rapid, it was as if the giggling child had been a mere illusion. She moved in front of Integra, hands clenched, guarding her from the newcomer.

How certain things never change.

 _Seras, will it always be that you'll rush in to protect me?_

Integra turned to grasp her gently. "It's fine. He works for me."

Seras went wide-eyed at her. "That scary-looking mister works for you?"

"Don't let his looks fool you," Integra said in a stage whisper. "I am far scarier than him."

Seras stared. But she said, "I believe you."

 _What a bizarre family reunion_.

Alucard was standing unnaturally still, even for him. Only his irises behind his tinted glasses were in motion, studying the mess on the ground. Then his pale mouth twisted with the darkest humor. At her approach his gaze snapped into hers.

 _Again, Integra?_ he seemed to be asking.

"Alucard," she began.

"My Master. When I said you should have picked a storm to run out, I didn't mean it literally."

"This is hardly a storm." Integra eyed his blotchy fedora. "Are you pouting?"

"I would be, but..." Alucard leaned forward. "I see you have a surprise for me."

"And I see _you_ are here, and that I should have known better than to think a note will placate Walter."

"Obviously, his concern was unwarranted. Impeccable aim, my Master." His pupils slitted. "Though I would have drawn it out."

"Circumstances," she told him. "Consider it a chew toy for your hound."

"Oh, and should its bite transcend the limits of flesh and tear through the soul in the bowels of hell, it would be a sweet thing indeed." Alucard's form rippled. He would have rather blood caking under his nails and bones powdering between his fingers and screams deafening his ears as he gutted the worm which had dared to offend his master in such a fashion. But a chew toy it was. He jutted his chin toward Seras. "Surely not in front of your new friend?"

Integra turned. Seras was watching them avidly. The rain was now a drizzle, the clouds were breaking up.

This was a survey, she had told herself, as she walked out of her room, out of the house, out of the car. Shitty lies, however, did not become truths whether they were repeated twice or twenty. If she would end up going back to the manor alone, and not with an additional passenger in the car—she would be disappointed in herself.

Yet therein lay the question. Was this about Seras, or was this about herself? Was this best for her? Was she not being selfish? Dragging her, a child, into her world again?

Seras surprised her by barreling into her.

"Seras?"

"Are you going to leave me?"

"What?" Integra breathed.

"Is that why he's here?" Seras glared at Alucard. "To take you home?" She shook violently. "Please! Take me with you! Please? I'll be good! I'll do all the chores! I can do the dishes and the laundry and—and—"

Integra gaped as Seras continued to babble. "You want to go with me?"

"You said we met in a dream!" Seras cried. "That means something, right?"

 _Don't leave me!_

 _Don't leave me!_

Integra swallowed. She rubbed the girl's back almost absently, waiting for her sobs to subside. "Yes," she said. "It means everything to me."

"It's why you're here." Seras looked up at her, pleading. "So you could come and get me."

How could she say no to those eyes? She would be lying anyway.

"If that is what you want."

"I want to go with you. I want—I want to become like you." In that moment, the child was older than her age, face etched with a fervor Integra had witnessed so often on paler cheeks. "If I go with you, could I learn to shoot like you do? Could you teach me?"

Certain things never change.

She was not an angel. She was not God. Knowledge of the future did not fix the past. _It seems_ , she sighed, _we're fated to be_. Misfits. Miscreants. Children who were forced to grow up too fast. In the end, what difference was there between this orphanage and the manor? It was simply that there were less actual children and more adults, and they stayed because they had nowhere else to go. They flocked to her because they knew she was the same and she would accept them when no one else did. _Isn't that right? Seras. Alucard. Walter._

The rain had stopped.

"Alucard," she called.

"Master." His answering tone was eerily flat. Integra was aware he was processing what had just played out before him and she would have to deal with him later. First things first.

"Give the body to your hound and let it leave no trace. Meet me at the entrance afterwards." She paused. "And lend me your coat."

Again, she felt rather than saw the quirk of his lips. "But it's summer."

"You don't think I'll meet any head of an establishment looking like a drowned cat, do you?"

Seras jolted at that. "Integra?"

"Let's go, Seras." Integra took her hand. "Let's go and get you home."

xx

xx

Mr. Carter of Hortense Children's Home was not fond of children. He did not regard this as an issue. There were cooks who did not like eating and vets who did not like animals. He, at least, fed the children three meals a day and provided them with warm sleeping quarters. Beyond that he could not be bothered. The girls had been particularly annoying this week with their tales of a make-believe stalker in the woods, and he had had to shut them up quickly. Such gossip risked hurting the orphanage's reputation and the donations made, and why would he be in this job if not for the hefty sums?

He was sipping his morning coffee when there was a knock on his office door. "Come in," he said, assuming it to be his breakfast.

It was not.

In walked the oddest pair of people he had ever seen. A girl entered first. Her hair was wet, her skin was dark and she was wearing a red coat. _In summer? Teenagers and their nonsense fads_. She also wore glasses, behind which blue eyes stared straight at his desk as if she owned it. She was followed by a towering man in a black suit and red cravat, whose look was indiscernible due to his shades. Mr. Carter found himself unnerved by the conceited grin on the man's face that was a radical contrast to his companion's cool mien.

"Mr. Carter?" the girl addressed him.

"Y-yes. Michael Carter," he answered, then remembered he was talking to a child. "Who the blazes are you?"

"Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing." She sat down without being invited. "Do you enjoy your job, Mr. Carter?"

"Hell who?" The name did not ring a bell. "Buggering what? Who do you think you are?"

"That's no way to speak to a young lady." She flicked a speck of dust off her clothing, before giving him a smile that for some reason made him break out in a cold sweat. "Fortunately for you, I am here for something very simple. One of your wards, Seras Victoria. I'm requesting her removal from this facility and placement in my care."

"In whose care, now?" Mr. Carter asked stupidly. "Seras Victoria? What's she done this time?"

"Excuse me?"

"She's a troublemaker. Been transferred twice in six months, doesn't listen to the instructors, gets into fights and runs off on her own. Unlucky, I reckon. Nasty bit of circumstance."

Integra's fingers twitched.

"Is that so," she said.

"You're welcome to take her off my hands. Though," he sneered, "you're just a kid yourself, aren't you?"

"Are you happy with how you're running this institution, Mr. Carter?" Integra asked suddenly.

"What did you say?"

"I have heard," she continued, "that some of the children have been complaining of an unsavory character frequenting the woods. Have you done anything about that?"

"What? Are you a buggering investigator now?" Mr. Carter pounded his desk. "It's all nonsense! They make up all sorts of stories because they want attention, the conniving little chits!" Having regained his bravado, he jabbed a finger at Integra. "You, girl, you're touched in the head if you think you can barge in and demand things out of me. Bring an adult, proper paperwork and let them do the talking while you keep your trap shut."

She startled him by emitting a laugh. "Pardon me. It's only that I'm so used to getting my way." Her smile fell. "And I am not about to end that streak."

"The bloody hell are you—"

It was then the tall man came into his line of vision and removed his shades.

Red.

Eyes. Not two, not three. Many, many _red eyes_.

 _Obey my Master_ , a dangerous voice said in his mind.

"Michael," Integra murmured. "I'm afraid I'm lacking the proper paperwork. Why don't you draw some up for me?"

"Yes..." Michael said sluggishly.

"And while you're at it, consider seeking another job. After all, the children here need a responsible, intelligent adult to take care of them and _not a complete buffoon_ ," she hissed.

"Not...a complete...buffoon..."

"Good." Integra regarded the man and his vacant expression pitilessly. She did not condone the use of vampiric hypnotism on civilians, yet she spared no charity on those foolish enough to anger her with their own ineptitude.

Alucard chuckled darkly beside her.

"Red and black."

She glanced up. "Hmm?"

He crinkled his eyes. "We match."

Integra looked down at herself. Red and black. "Yes," she said. "I appreciate that you altered it so I don't resemble a Victorian cross-dresser."

"Are you saying my fashion is outdated?"

Integra rolled her eyes.

The hypnotized man filled out a form. The sun was getting stronger and Alucard was feeling a bit peckish. "After he's done, may I eat him?"

"No, Alucard. Behave."

"But I have risen in the morning for two days in a row, and if my hunger for your answers is not to be sated, then at least for blood it should."

Integra did not reply. She filled out the rest of the information. Signing at the bottom with a flourish, she made to stand. "Now that's done and over with, let's head back before I develop an ecosystem in these wet clothes."

Alucard blocked her path.

"Integra," he said, "who is that girl?"

Her face was impassive. "And with your ears I'd thought you would have picked up on it. Seras Victoria, a ward of this orphanage, now mine." She attempted to slide off her seat and was blocked once again.

"Who is she to you, that you would go to these lengths to secure her? I have never heard you mention this girl before. I have never known you to desire any form of female companionship, and now you've come all the way here to foster this girl, because of a dream?" Alucard let the questions escape him like the rainfall earlier, his composure collapsing, the monster able to take only so much. "The dream you hide from _me_."

Integra inhaled. "Alucard—"

"You're so close yet you're so distant." With a mournful air he sealed the stretch between them and gripped the arms of her chair. "You can treat me like the dog I am and leave me scraps and order me to roll over, but even a common mongrel basks in the trust of his master!"

Integra gazed at him, this man, this vampire she loved and trusted—wanted to trust—but she knew that the day she told him her secrets would be the day that this farce of a peace would be extinguished forever. She could not have that, especially now when Seras would be living with them. She did not want her life to spiral into chaos again when this was her second chance and she was so tired of it all.

She lifted a hand and stroked his cheek. She granted him a piece of her truth.

"I wish I could tell you."

"Integra," he croaked.

Should she do it? She had wanted to for some time. For thirty years, really. She wondered how he would react.

There was one way to find out.

She brushed a kiss to the corner of his pale, cold lips.

He froze.

It was a very brief kiss. Not even worthy to be called a kiss. More like a susurrus. But it was enough, and her lips burned. "Take this as a meager substitute for the answers I am unable to give you," she said.

His eyes were so red, Integra almost feared they would drop as tears.

She ducked under his arm and exited the room.

She did not hear him come after her.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

NOTES

It so happens that I will reach the end of a chapter, and be at a complete loss as to what I should leave as an end note other than "Thank you" and "I love you" and "You are the sun and moon and stars of my writing process," because I am sure you know all these things already. But good things must go on repeating. So thank you and love you all for your loving support. I cannot believe it's already Halloween. Can _you_ believe it's already Halloween? I wish I could have a share of your credulousness. Well anyway, Happy Halloween! See you soon!


	9. cycle

xx

xx

 **08.**

 **cycle**

xx

xx

 _...take...this...as...a...meager...substitute..._

Rarely did the mind of the No-Life King come to a standstill. In sleep, his dreams were vivid, cruel montages to his defeats. And this, _this_ must be a dream, for how _cruel_ it was—this position, this pressure, this temperature he was locked in, of his master and her lips which had branded him anew. _Take this as a meager substitute_ , she said. Meager? He laughed. _Integra, from you, nothing is meager_.

The arms of the chair splintered under his fingers.

Kissing for the sake of kissing had become lost to him as a vampire. His mouth was no longer a conveyor of affection but a weapon, and to be near its false breath, to feel its cold lips, meant death. His lust for blood overrode that for whatever pitiful pleasure a kiss could evoke. What use did he have for tenderness, how could he, when he was the very definition of atrocity? By the time he had met Integra, touch without bloodshed had become such a foreign concept that he had ceased to recognize it.

"How red they are," she had said to him, three years ago.

She had given him her first order, clumsily worded though it had been. "Unc— _Richard's_ men. They're still in the house. Find them and—" She quietened.

"And kill them?" he had prompted. She had nodded, and that had been enough. He had obeyed with glee, having tasted her potential, the magnificence she would blossom into. It was too easy tracking down those who bore Richard's stench and draining them of their screams. The fresh spill replenished him, and yet, it was _her_ essence that clung like a drug upon his tongue.

He returned to her, finding her perched on the foot of her bed. She had washed and changed. She had even dressed her wound. He would have been impressed, had she not looked so faint. _Only a child_ , he thought, not without pity. Unbidden, the image of another child from another life—a black-haired boy with hatred in his eyes _ah, don't go down that path, now_ —flickered in his mind.

He knelt before her, and she froze for a split second.

"The traitors have been disposed of, my Master."

"Oh." She breathed deeply. "Good. Thank you...Alucard."

The way she said his name was novel indeed. Each instance her predecessors had uttered it had rubbed salt into the wound of captivity, but here there was no sting to be felt. Why was that?

He simpered. "You don't have to thank me. I am yours to command."

She pursed her lips at the reminder. Nonetheless, she studied him with careful eyes. A familiar shade of blue, yet again different. Clearer, perhaps. That was when she made that remark.

 _How red they are._

"Red?"

"Your eyes."

He laughed outright. "Of course. I am a vampire."

To his great amusement and hunger, she herself colored red in embarrassment. "A very impudent vampire."

He bowed his head. "Forgive me."

"Look at me," she bid, in a stronger voice. The small bit of indignation he had incited seemed to have emboldened her. Her gaze had increased in its intensity when he met it. He was beginning to understand that her eyes appeared different because they were absent of the clinical appraisal he had been subject to as needles and tubes and poisons assailed him. She was regarding him as a _person_ , and he did not know what to think of that. _My, my. Arthur, what have you been_ not _teaching this girl?_

"Alucard," she said. "Dracula."

It was his turn to freeze.

"That is who you are, isn't it?"

"I have been stripped of that moniker a long time ago," he stated.

"Still." She leaned closer. "I suppose I should be afraid of you, but I'm not. Not really. Even after what I have read and heard and seen of you, you aren't that frightening to me."

"Even after you have read of my atrocities, heard of my infamies, seen me rip the limbs off your dead uncle? Halve the heads of his cronies and drink their blood?" He made a point of baring his teeth, tapering and deadly and _inhuman_ , at her. "Is that wise, I wonder?"

"It's not a matter of wisdom," she said seriously. "It's a matter of knowing you are mine."

 _Mine_.

Something molten flowed inside him at the stark declaration.

She sighed. "As long as you won't kill me in my sleep, I don't care." Then she raised a hand, and despite himself, he tensed. It merely hovered above his face, however. "May I touch you?"

"I am yours," he said simply, yet the connotations of those three words were anything but simple, too intricate for her to have been aware and for him to contemplate.

Dainty, dark fingers, warm and soft, landed on his sunken cheeks. They moved as whispers. "You're like snow. Cold and white." They traced the outline of his orbits. He did not blink. "And your eyes, they're like miniature suns."

The irony.

The clear blue pools in which those suns were reflected rippled sleepily, and she released him all too soon.

She yawned behind her hand, hiding the little blush that persisted. "I would like to get better acquainted with you. But right now..."

"Rest, my Master Integral," he said.

Her brows furrowed. "Call me Integra. Everyone does...well, Father—and Walter and Miriam and a few others, but...they're all...gone..." Her shoulders drooped. "It's just you and me now, Alucard."

He had no answer. She swayed, and he caught her in his arms and carried her to the pillows, where she snuggled under the quilt he drew up to her chin.

"It's the strangest fairy tale..." she mumbled, and then she was asleep.

A secret was locked away in the family basement. An ancient vampire was her inheritance. In place of a knight in shining armor there was a monster, and a girl with a gun and blood down her sleeve. And now that monster was tucking her in. _A fairy tale_. For all fairy tales are morbid at heart, truths of death and retribution disguised as lies. From the moment she had entered his cell, his story had commenced once more. Alucard, the servant of Integra Hellsing, that was what he was.

Alucard melted into the shadows, and many miniature suns kept guard over the little sleeping beauty with thorns.

Two glorious days passed as she said. It was just the two of them in the manor, getting acquainted with each other. He told her of the past, she told him of the present, he was hers entirely. Not Hellsing's, the organization's. Hers. _Integra's_. And she was his, even if it was only in the way that she was his master. She was only _his_ master.

On the third day, Walter arrived.

The chair collapsed.

Alucard straightened. He stuck his tongue out and traced the corner she had kissed, desperate for a lingering taste. _Ah, Integra, must you make me a more depraved creature than I already am?_ He shuddered and laughed again, humorlessly, his features flickering along with the lights in the office.

Behind the desk, Michael Carter grunted.

"That's right. I almost forgot you were there, you pungent waste of space," Alucard murmured. "Well, she said not to eat you, but she never said not to kill you." He needed to crush something and the skull of a brainless buffoon would do nicely.

As his nails seized the head and compressed, a thought occurred to him.

Would the real fifteen-year-old Integra have kissed him?

 _The_ real _fifteen-year-old Integra...?_

What a preposterous notion. What was this nonsense? Of course she was _real_. Nothing about her could be fabricated against him.

But.

Would she, the Integra he thought he knew, have kissed him? The answer, he loathed to admit, was no. At least, he would not have expected it of her. Not in such a manner. Not as "a meager substitute." Not without the slightest blush. Truly, it was as if she had aged a decade's worth of brass in—

Alucard dropped the human with a thud.

 _Aged._

Preposterous.

 _Is it?_

He had been fixated on the dream as the catalyst, on its contents, its _war_ that he had neglected—

 _"You've made me—"_

 _"You never change."_

 _"That precious connection of yours certainly didn't help when—"_

When what?

 **When?**

xx

xx

Seras was outside, a rucksack slung over her shoulder, gazing up at the sky that was uncovering to be the same shade as her eyes. When she saw Integra she braced herself for the worst.

Yet Integra's expression was serene. She held out her hand. "Ready?"

Seras let herself be led out of the gates, away from everything she hated. Sunlight glinted off the older girl, her hair brighter and longer than hers had ever been. Seras was having a hard time believing this was happening, even as she followed this girl who had swooped down like the angel she said she was not.

Last night, she had had her nightmare again. She had crawled out of bed, sat outside under the colorless sky and maybe, somewhere between crying and singing the song she used to hear on the radio, she had made a wish. Maybe. She was not sure. She just knew that somewhere between waiting for the rain and the rain falling, Integra had appeared.

She was the prettiest person she had ever seen.

Why would someone like her want to have anything to do with unlucky Seras Victoria? She had been the one who insisted, after all. Her self-doubt doubled when they came up to an obviously expensive-looking car. Seras stopped. The adrenaline rush that had made her beg Integra to take her with her had died down and she faltered. She did not want to be a burden, if she was Integra would not want her anymore, _she'll return me here and I'll be alone again_ —

Integra took both her hands and squeezed them.

"It's okay if you're having second thoughts. I know this is very sudden for you. You barely know me and—" An emotion flitted across Integra's face, gone before Seras could name it. "I can't guarantee my world will be a happy one. But I promise, Seras, you can stay as long as you want. I will never make you leave, and I will never leave you."

Somehow, Seras got the feeling that Integra had missed a word at the end. That could hardly be right, though, could it?

"What about your parents?" Seras asked.

"They're dead," she said.

Oh. Integra was an orphan like her. Maybe that explained the sadness in her eyes. It had been the first thing Seras had noticed about her. Sad yet smiling. Only sad people could smile in the rain, so Seras had not been afraid. She was not afraid now, following her to a whole new world where she could learn to be as brave and strong. Integra was her savior.

Footsteps came from behind. Seras stiffened, ready to spring, but Integra rubbed her palms reassuringly as she said, "We're heading back, Dylan."

"Yes, Miss Hellsing. Er..."

"This is Seras Victoria. Seras, this is Dylan Basbanes. He works for me as well."

Seras turned to the man who had startled her and back to Integra with round eyes. Just how many people did Integra have working for her?

"Are you very important, Integra?" she whispered.

Integra grimaced.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Victoria," Dylan said. "Please forgive me for frightening you earlier. Are you coming with us?"

Seras merely nodded, wary still.

"Well, the manor's certainly got more rooms than it knows what to do with," Dylan started cheerfully, then at the look Integra shot him shut up at once. He saluted and hurried to the driver's seat.

"Manor?" Seras squeaked.

She clutched Integra's coat sleeve. "Are there a lot of people living with you in the—the manor?"

"No, actually," Integra soothed. "It's quite empty. It'll be alright, Seras. You'll only ever see the same few people."

"What about the scary mister? The one who gave you this coat? Does he live there, too? Is he coming with us?"

A breeze picked up in that moment, cooler than was normal for summer, causing Integra to instinctively grasp the lapels of the coat. His coat. He had altered it, yet it was so candidly his, the same garish red and heavy weight, somehow dwarfing her despite the adjustments. It also _felt_ like him, how the fabric caressed her skin, in an almost ticklish way; though he had sworn it was not sentient or otherwise connected to him. Worse, it _smelled_ like him. Perhaps she would have been less aggrieved by this had it been a marginally offensive odor, such as mothballs or dirt—or blood—but no. It had to smell _pleasant_. Something _Alucard_ that she could have singled out in a room full of vampires each with their coppery undertones. Scent triggered vexingly realistic memories, she knew. And from now on she would remember a kiss.

The kiss, the meager kiss.

She parted her burning lips to call him, then closed them. If he wanted to be here, he would be here, long before she had to call him forth. Yet there was only the breeze and the sun that he hated.

"He came here on his own, he'll go back on his own. And should he choose to tarry, he will behave if he knows what's good for him," Integra said loudly.

There was no answer. Only the breeze and the sun and the red fabric that smelled like him.

Like that day, that morning when he disappeared.

But then Seras tugged her hand, and her touch was warm, and when she looked down it was a small child with blue eyes who smiled bravely at her.

 _So he will return to me._

She smiled back. "Shall we?"

xx

xx

Walter had seen so much shite, _done_ so much shite both natural and supernatural that in the latter half of his allotted century he would have offered everyone tea first before letting anything ruffle his feathers. Unfortunately, it was becoming painfully evident that not even life's harshest trials had prepared him for the conundrum that was his teenage lady and her whims. He watched rather helplessly as Integra slid out of the car (was that _Alucard's_ coat she was wearing?) and feared he would lose his eyebrows when a child stumbled after her.

"Why, who could that be?" Miriam voiced.

He saw the child grab Integra's arm at the sight of the welcoming party. He also saw Integra bend down and coax her with a patience he had never witnessed her exercise around other children. She was important to her, he realized. How or why, he did not know. But the observation forced Walter to check himself.

"My lady," he greeted.

"Walter."

He bowed to their guest's eye level. "And may I ask your name, miss?"

She seemed to be a skittish thing, yet she answered steadily, "Seras Victoria."

"Welcome to Hellsing Manor, Miss Victoria. My name is Walter C. Dornez. I'm Miss Hellsing's butler."

"Hello," Seras mumbled. Miriam came forward next and proceeded to fuss over her, leaving Walter and Integra to face each other.

"Will Miss Victoria be staying with us, my lady?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"For as long as she wants," Integra affirmed. "Make the necessary arrangements, Walter."

 _Why?_ he wanted to ask. _Why did you go alone? Where did you go? Why there? Why this girl? Where is Alucard? Is that his coat?_ His litany of questions was contained in a single, "Understood," in that he did not understand a thing.

Integra only gave him a small smile. "I won't be running off in the morning again, I promise."

He tried to return it.

"My goodness, have you dears been out in the rain?" Miriam exclaimed. "You're all cold and wet! A warm bath is in order, I should think, and a hearty breakfast. Let's get you inside."

Integra waved Seras away gently when she gravitated toward her. "Go with Miriam, Seras. I'll join you for breakfast." She added, "You're safe here, I promise."

Seras looked back as Miriam ushered her in, hesitant at first, then mustered up her courage. She squared her shoulders and disappeared through the doorway.

Walter saw how, with the absence of the girl, Integra's face went blank. Her eyes trailed over the bricks of the manor, frigid and appraising, and he had to clear his throat; he felt uncomfortable even if the gaze was not directed at him. "My lady, I had thought—it did not settle well with me, you must be aware, to see you estranged from your peers at a young age. But this..." He chose his words carefully. "For a child to be brought up in this environment—"

"Like I was?" Integra said.

It could not have been worse if she had said it with bitterness. It was spoken as a matter of fact, disconnected from all personal regard. Integra had never visibly resented the position she was raised—and to put it in crude terms, bred—into, yet he wondered now if the rebellious phase she was apparently going through was grating on it. "You were, and are, an exceptional child, Integra. But ordinary children, such as Miss Victoria—"

"Oh, does she seem ordinary to you? But I suppose I thought that too, once upon a time." Integra started for the doors.

"Are you expecting her to be privy to our business?" Walter persisted.

"I'm not my father, Walter, to bring an orphan into this house for the purpose of making her into a human weapon."

He stopped cold.

"To answer your question," she continued, cruel in her utter dispassion, "it's her choice whether she wants to know. I won't lie to her. Regardless." She stepped into the shade of the entrance hall and turned to him. A slant of sunlight fell across the marble floor and divided her figure.

"Seras will have a happy life here, Walter," Integra said, the stare of the illuminated half, her left, unyielding. "I will make sure she has a happy, normal life here, as normal as we can possibly pretend it is. I will do everything in my power to make it so." She said it slowly, clearly, as though she was not talking to him but to the world and the weavers of fate, daring them to go against her.

And so softly he thought he must have imagined it, "The cycle ends here."

The spell was broken then. Integra blinked; only her left eye, and not as deliberately as to be a wink. "Treat Seras with the same respect as you would give me."

It signaled the end of the conversation and again he had to hold his tongue, which had gone very dry.

"Your…coat, my lady."

"No need," she said, and the red coat fluttered in the draft.

Mocking.

xx

xx

 _It was twelve-year-old Integra who answered the door. "Walter, you're back!" She threw herself into the man's arms._

 _"My lady, my lady," he repeated. "My lady Integra, I had no idea..."_

 _"It's alright. I'm alive, at least," she said. She urged him to his feet. "But I'm so glad you're back! I have someone to show you."_

 _They entered the sitting room, and Walter saw. The gaunt face, the wild hair, the vulgar red coat. It was_ _—_

 _"Alucard! Wake up, you silly vampire."_

 _The vampire was roused from his lethargy on the couch. Without opening his eyes he said, "Oh, look who it is."_

 _"You didn't even look," she pointed out. With a fondness that should not be there. To Walter she said, "Alucard told me you two used to be partners on the battlefield. Aren't you glad to see him again?"_

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* * *

NOTES

The world may be going to pieces but the fic must go on. In which Integra shakes salt everywhere, poor Alucard and Walter become pickles, and Seras is, as always, a cutie patootie.

Sorry, Pip. You know I love you.

I am a very tired bean these days and so I had to cut this chapter off here before it could get too long for me to edit on time. So many apologies for it being on the short side. Oh, wow, as I was writing this I had no idea I had reached one hundred reviews, thank you everyone so, so much! Your love is what inspires me to go on!

What will happen next chapter? Where is Alucard? How will Walter fare? Has the future been changed for the better or worse? I cannot answer these questions, but you never know. The plot may be already upon you.


	10. spoiled cake

xx

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 **09.**

 **spoiled cake**

xx

xx

Seras darted from room to room like a comet. The timid little thing who had started off the tour attached to Integra's side was now peering into empty doorways of her own volition, eyes wide with wonderment. Integra smiled after her. She ignored the part of her that insisted, _You know this house, Seras. You know it better than I do_.

She stomped on that thought. That Seras was gone, forever. _This_ Seras was the one she had to take care of, as her counterpart had taken care of old Integra. She watched and heard her gasp at the volumes upon volumes of books lining the shelves of the library she had just discovered, and there was nothing she wished more than to preserve that expression of happiness. _Seras, let's be happy this time. Happier than we allowed ourselves to be. You and me._

"You can pick one out, if you want," Integra said.

Seras glanced at her and back at the books, flustered. "I don't know...there's so many..."

Integra examined a shelf. It carried her childhood favorites. Tales of knights and quests and a bit of romance. She could admit she used to read them in bed and dream of valorous men who would come to her aid and press a kiss to her hand. But dreams, were only ever dreams.

She pulled off a weathered volume and gave it to Seras. "Why don't you try this one? Once the novelty wears off, I'm sure, you'll find this house rather boring. You should have something to read, at least."

Seras clutched it to her chest. She looked as if she did not know what to say. After a moment she asked, "Can we see upstairs?"

"Of course."

On the next floor, Integra led Seras to a room which had been tidied during breakfast. "And here is your room."

Seras nearly dropped the book.

"My room...?"

She seemed rooted to the spot. Hesitantly, she took a step inside.

On such short notice, it was hardly more than a large guest room, yet there was sunlight streaming through the windows. _She would love that_ , Integra had thought. Accepting herself as a vampire had not stopped Seras from loving the day or bemoaning her inability to enjoy it. The sun did not hurt Seras, but it did enfeeble her, and so in addition to staying indoors she would try to appreciate it in roundabout ways.

 _"Sunlight has a certain scent, did you know, Master Integra?"_

"Do you like it? Or if you'd prefer a different room, that can be arranged," Integra assured.

Seras turned to face her. She shut her eyes.

"Seras? What's wrong?"

"I feel like this is all too good to be true," the child said in a tiny voice, "and if I look at it too long, I'll waste it and it'll disappear."

"That's silly," Integra remarked softly. "I'm right here, and I won't disappear on you."

"But I've never had good things happen to me before. Why should they happen now?"

 _Because I willed it._

"Maybe this is all a dream."

Integra's response was to pinch her cheek.

Seras squeaked, her eyes flying open. "Wha—what was that for?"

"Did it hurt?"

"Yeah, it did!"

"Good, that means it's not a dream," Integra deadpanned.

Seras gaped at her. Then she burst into giggles.

Integra relaxed. _There now_.

The child moved to hug her, still giggling, and Integra held her tight. She stroked her hair, attempting in vain to quell the regret at not having made enough of these gestures in their past life. _My darling girl. I loved you most. I loved you best. You knew that, right?_

"Thank you, Integra. You're so kind to me."

She blinked rapidly.

A yawn was stifled against her blouse. Seras had been through turmoil in a single morning, and out of worry and excitement had not gotten one wink in the car. It was no wonder she was sleepy. Integra steered her toward the bed. "You need to get some sleep."

"Oh, but I haven't seen the rest of the manor yet!"

"This house isn't going anywhere, ninny," she teased. "Or do you need me to pinch you again?"

"Okay, okay!" Seras scrambled under the thin summer sheets. Once settled, however, her face dimmed, and she began to erratically thumb the frayed cover of the book she had kept in her steadfast grasp. She looked up at Integra from her pillows and her words came out in a rush. "I don't—I don't mean to sound like a baby but—could you—could you stay until I fall asleep? Please? I have—dreams—bad ones."

Integra knew those bad dreams well. She asked no questions. She merely sat on the bed beside her and made to take the book from her. "I'll read to you, then."

Seras shielded it with her hands. "No!" She flushed. "I mean—I like talking to you. I haven't—I haven't really talked to anyone like this, ever." She flushed deeper. "Is that okay?"

There was nothing Integra would deny her. She swept her fringe from her earnest eyes. "What shall we talk about?"

"I don't know where to start!" Seras exclaimed, so different from the broken girl who had sat outside waiting for the rain, the vengeful girl who had watched the castration of her assaulter, the desperate girl who had begged to go with her. Here she was simply a curious girl fascinated with her new home and her new friend whom she may or may not have met in a dream. There was in Seras, always, an inextinguishable light. "Oh, oh! Mrs. Bolger told me..."

And thus they talked about the topics raised by chatty old Miriam, which Integra reaffirmed or refuted to the best of her memory, with her hand resting warmly on Seras' forehead all the while. Until pauses in speech grew more frequent, and blue, blue eyes became half-closed.

Seras reached up and held onto Integra's fingers. "Are you sure you're not an angel or maybe a fairy godmother?"

Integra smiled indulgently. "I'm sure, you silly thing."

"That was silly for me to say, because fairy godmothers are supposed to be old," Seras agreed, missing the pain in Integra's eyes. "You're a real lady in a real manor, that makes you closer to a princess. Only..." She drifted off. "More..."

Slowly, Integra removed her hand. She tucked Seras' in, wishing—no, _ordering_ her nightmares away.

"It's not enough to be a lady or a prince or even a king of a certain place," she whispered. "We always have to be more. Our own knights, our own fairy godmothers, even," she sighed, "our own monsters."

Seras slept soundly.

"My Seras. You were my wings. You were my only light for such a long time. You must have known..." There was that damnable sting in her eyes again. "I never would have survived that time without you."

She inhaled, and kept the tears at bay.

"So I'll kiss you goodbye, Seras. The Seras I've known, the Seras I've loved, so I can know you anew and love you better." And she did. She kissed her tenderly on the brow, and then wrenched away lest a drop fall.

The summer was cold. The sun beat against her skin and set her locks ablaze but she felt so cold. Death had left a chill and she suspected it was permanent. A frostbitten soul.

Integra stood and went to draw the curtains.

The book she gave Seras caught her attention as she headed for the door. She picked it up and flipped, out of distant habit, to a dog-eared page. A lay. _Lanval_. She had not read it in years.

 _Lanval, fair friend, for you I've come,_

 _For you I've traveled far from home._

 _If you are brave and courteous,_

 _You'll be more glad and prosperous_

 _Than ever was emperor or king,_

 _For I love you over everything._

Her lips twisted. She skipped immediately to Lanval's reply.

 _There's no command, you may be sure,_

 _Wise or foolish, what you will,_

 _Which I don't promise to fulfill._

 _I'll follow only your behest . . ._

That was enough. What tripe. She snapped the book shut and discarded it on a dresser. She checked on Seras once more, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

And walked straight into Alucard.

She reflexively grabbed the front of his black suit jacket. _Silk_ , was her impression. Then _cold_ and _hard_ , his body underneath. Yesterday, when he had broken her fall from the ladder, she had been so surprised he was _real_ that nothing else had registered. Presently, however, she was very aware of his broad form against hers. Integra lurched back and saw he was gazing down at her with unreadable crimson eyes.

"Master." His gloved fingers closed on hers and prevented her from going far. "You should watch your step."

"Alucard." She steadied herself. "How long have you been standing here?"

His gaze flicked to the door behind her. He searched her face. "I have just arrived."

 _Thank God._ "And where have you been?" Integra demanded. She found she did not want to retract her hand. She needed his coldness to assuage her own. "You didn't cause any casualties, I hope."

There was a ghost of a smile. "Such deplorable regard you hold me in. No, my Master, your streets remain unsullied. I have simply been, shall I say, lost in thought." His gaze dropped to her lips.

They burned.

Integra leaned against the door, unabashed. He was sinful in black, with a splash of red around his neck. She liked him better without his coat. She wondered why he persisted in wearing it, that relic of his most hated past. Though she knew him best, such facets were unpolished, questions she had to derive answers to by conjecture because he was never there. _Then again, it wasn't as if he was exactly forthcoming even when he was around._

"Ah, now will you be the one lost?" Alucard tightened his grip on her hand minutely. "Where do you go that I cannot follow?"

 _When, not where_.

Integra pulled her hand back. He let her go.

"Nowhere you can't follow," she corrected. "I'm going to my office. The hour is late. You have my permission to retire for the day." She slid past him.

"Perhaps that girl inside may provide a clue."

If he was trying to get a rise out of her, he succeeded. Integra whipped around and said, deathly calm, "Leave Seras alone."

Alucard laughed low. "Now you truly wound me. What do you imagine I'll do, frighten her to death?"

"These are your orders," Integra enunciated. "Leave Seras alone. She knows nothing. Absolutely nothing. Upset her and I'll confine you to your crypt."

He snarled. "Orders? These are my orders? Are you hearing yourself? That girl merits a measure of this extent?"

"I hear loud and clear and it certainly sounds like you're questioning _my orders_ ," she hissed.

An imperceptible emotion darkened his pallor, then he quietened. "No, my Master. I dare not. Not when your _meager substitute_ haunts me still." His mouth curved into what was supposed to be a provocative smile, but failed to reach his eyes. "Yet, meager as it is, you don't expect it to sweeten me for long."

"Actually, I expect it to sweeten you for much longer."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Integra said. With no warning whatsoever she yanked his cravat and drew his face parallel to hers. "Because it's my kiss. _My_ kiss, Alucard. Your _Master's_ kiss."

"Would you like me to demonstrate a real kiss?" Alucard ventured at last, his voracity tearing at its seams. What he harbored for her, a possessiveness for his master that mirrored her own for him, was his undoing and almost, almost it frightened _him_. This was not his pace. He would have been content to wait until it was _she_ who could not wait, yet this—how violent! Because somehow, somehow _this was not the real fifteen-year-old Integra_. This Integra gave, in coarse human vernacular, _absolutely zero fucks_ and it was maddening, cruelly maddening— "Shall I begin with the sole of your foot? Tell me, Integra. Tell me tell me _tell me. Spune-mi_."

She wanted—she wanted him to—

"You are utterly ridiculous." Integra released him with a shove. It was a miracle no one had chanced upon them in the corridor. She—she was _not_ breathless—was going to go drown herself in paperwork.

His voice cut through the silence behind her back.

"When, Integra?"

She should not have stopped.

She stopped.

 _When_. Without context, it was an innocent query.

And the Devil was anything but innocent.

"Integra!"

She jumped. That was Miriam.

She turned back to see the woman heading toward her. Alucard was gone. The housekeeper did not appear to have noticed he had been there at all, and came up to her cheerily. "There you are. Wonderful. Have you shown Miss Victoria her room?"

Integra recollected herself in Alucard's wake. "Yes. She's asleep."

Miriam looked disappointed. "You see, I was going to ask her what she wanted for lunch. The size of that child! I don't think she's been eating properly!" She focused on Integra. "I must say, dear, I am very glad you brought her here. She was very shy earlier, but I could tell she's a sunbeam of a child, and Lord knows this house needs more of that." Then in an undertone she added, "Is she who you were looking for yesterday?"

Integra stared at the woman whose expression was a tad too knowing. "Miriam..."

To her surprise, Miriam made a shushing motion. "Now don't you go worrying off that pretty blonde head. I won't tell Mr. Dornez or your red gentleman. This is something you want to keep to yourself, I understand." She sniffed. "Men. I don't want to be putting poor late Mr. Bolger in the same pool, but they can be quite insensitive, can't they?"

Had her old nanny always been this shrewd? "Thank you," Integra whispered.

Miriam patted her shoulder dotingly. "There's still the matter of lunch, I fear. Do you have an idea?"

"Seras likes...lamb." She recalled her mentioning it once over the dinner table, because Seras would be quick to devour her blood, and she would fill the void as she ate ( _"That's a lovely piece of lamb, Master Integra, I can smell it's cooked just right, it used to be my favorite when I was little_...") "Lamb cutlets."

"Delightful," Miriam said. "Remember, my dear, you can depend on us. We won't think any less of you if you do."

"I will," Integra said, _But I'm afraid that's no longer an option_.

xx

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Three hours later, Seras woke up confused. This was not her bed in the orphanage. The sheets were fluffy. The pillows were even fluffier. Wait, there was more than one pillow? Seras shook her head, and then it dawned on her, the biggest change.

She had not had a nightmare.

No nightmare. _No nightmare!_ No more of their...deaths... Seras could scarcely believe it at first. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it, and hugged it so tight it would have coughed out stuffing. She was so happy she started crying, and sniffled into the pillow for quite a while.

Soon she rubbed away her tears and blushed a bit. It was silly of her to cry when she was so happy. She did not want to seem ungrateful to Integra or make her worried. _Integra!_ Seras peeped around the room—it overwhelmed her to think of it as _her_ room—but of course the older girl was not there. The book she had given her was lying on a dresser and Seras hopped out of bed and over to it, hugging it as well, in lieu of its owner. She felt warm and protected.

Her stomach emitted a little gurgle. A clock on the wall told her it was lunchtime. Seras hoped that meant she would be eating with Integra again. Maybe—maybe she could go and find her this time!

That she did not know where in the huge manor Integra could be stopped her short.

"You can do this, Seras!" the girl said, pepping herself up. It would be an adventure, of sorts. She could not expect Integra to show her everywhere. She had to stand on her own two feet! And, that way, she would be less of a burden.

Seras squeezed her fists. "Okay!"

Once outside, she attempted to retrace their steps. The corridors appeared much wider and lengthier than they had been when she was with Integra. The doors looked identical, too. She managed to end up back in the library, which was empty. Seras resumed wandering, wracking her brain for a clue.

"Miss Victoria?"

She hid around a corner.

It was Mr. Dornez, the butler. His grey eyes were genial and not at all fazed by her reaction. "Miss Victoria, are you in need of assistance?"

"I was looking for Integra," Seras mumbled, her face guarded. She had liked Mrs. Bolger well enough, because she reminded her of her grandmother, but she had only told Mr. Dornez her name and was not yet sure what to think about him.

"Miss Hellsing is currently in her office."

"Office?" Seras squeaked. _Stupid!_ Of course a person as important as Integra would have her own office, in a house this big. It only made sense. And its implication made her shrink. "I—I don't want to disturb her..."

"Not at all," the butler said. "I was on my way to call her for lunch. I believe she would be very happy to see you."

"Really?"

"Yes," Walter said. Though he did not understand it in the least. He bowed. "If you will please follow me."

It was verily new and strange, this whole experience. As if the manor and its inhabitants were somehow separate from the rest of England. The lady, the butler...the soldiers...the mysterious man in the red coat...

They arrived on the top floor, where Mr. Dornez approached a set of stately wooden doors. He knocked. "My lady."

"Enter."

The doors opened to an enormous room with many windows. In the middle sat a desk, and behind it Integra, who was tapping the end of a fountain pen on her bottom lip as she glared at a sentence. Seras suddenly felt infinitely small. She _knew_ it was different but—she had stood in front of desks before, led there by an adult, who would say, _I must inform you that Seras has caused trouble again..._

"My lady, Miss Victoria has come to see you."

"Seras?" Integra looked up. Her eyes softened.

Those eyes—blue like hers, only lighter—were eyes she had known for less than a day, yet they felt to Seras like love. A love she had last seen in her parents' eyes.

Integra did not stay behind her desk. She abandoned her papers, and met her halfway. She bent down, holding her gaze, and Seras felt more of that love. "Good afternoon, Seras."

"Good afternoon, Integra," she reciprocated shyly.

"I trust your sleep was dreamless."

"It was! How did you know?" Seras asked, amazed.

"I ordered them away," Integra said. "Your bad dreams."

"Does that work?"

"Oh, there are few monsters in this world that do not yield to me," Integra said dryly.

Neither of them noticed Walter's fixed look.

"Whatever your monsters are, Seras, I won't let them get to you."

"You don't have to. You've already done so much for me, Integra," Seras whispered. "I don't have anything to give back."

Integra cupped her face. It was strange. Seras did not like people touching her. But it never occurred to her to recoil from Integra's hands, not just because they saved her. They were gentle and strong. Like her mother's had been. Like her father's had been. It was the first time their memory did not drive her to despair.

"Seeing you smile is enough."

Seras smiled.

"Is it lunch already?"

Walter answered. "Yes, my lady."

"Let's be going, then." Integra offered Seras a hand, and the child took it at once. They made their way down, side by side, to the dining room.

"Integra, what is it that you do, exactly?" Seras asked.

Integra did not skip a beat. "I run a paramilitary organization that services the Queen."

Paramilitary organization? The Queen? Seras' mind was abuzz. "Like a knight?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, when I come of age, I will be knighted." Integra said this with a curious quirk of her lips, as though she was finding the prospect wearily amusing. Seras could not imagine why. It seemed terribly exciting and daunting to her.

"If you're a knight, does that mean you protect people?" Seras frowned. "Or is that just medieval knights?"

A muscle twitched in Integra's palm. "I hope," she said, "I will be able to."

Seras squeezed her hand. "It's what I hope I'll do, too! As a police officer. That's my dream."

Abruptly Integra stopped, and regarded her solemnly. Seras was beginning to worry she had said something wrong when Integra murmured, "Yes, I can see you'll become a fine police girl."

Walter opened the doors for them, and they entered the dining room, Seras' cheeks flushed pink. She allowed herself to be distracted by the table. Lamb cutlets were her favorite! She had not had them since... She shook her head and sat down.

Walter poured their drinks.

The lamb was delicious.

A call came from Sir Penwood in the middle of the meal, which Walter put on hold. He asked Integra if she would take it.

"Sir Penwood," Integra repeated. She rose from her chair. "Excellent. I'll ask him if he's available for a visit tomorrow. It's been long since we had a fencing match."

Walter coughed. "A fencing match, my lady? With Shelby Penwood?"

"He's an exceptional swordsman, Walter, don't you know?" She chuckled as she left, sharing an inside joke with herself.

Walter refilled their glasses in her absence and Seras slowed her eating. She still was not comfortable around Mr. Dornez. Years of anticipating the intentions of adults told her he could spring a question on her at any minute. Which he did.

"Miss Victoria, may I ask you a question?"

Seras swallowed a piece of cutlet. Mr. Dornez looked guileless, but she never did trust adults when they started off with that sentence. "Yes."

"How did you come to know Miss Hellsing?"

Seras lowered her fork. "We met once in a dream."

Walter paused. Dreams, again? Was it his imagination, or was he sensing a pattern here? "A...dream."

"That's what Integra said." Seras drew lines in her sauce with her fork. "I don't remember it, though." She wished she could. She wished she could understand Integra as effortlessly as Integra seemed to understand her. It really was quite unfair.

"I see. Today, then, was the first time you met her in person?"

Seras disturbed her salad. "Yes. She saved me."

"She saved you?"

"She killed him."

Walter was smart enough to drop the conversation, and to glean that the event which had caused Integra to pull the trigger had been heinous, and had enraged her _murderously_ —and that this girl who was speaking of it without inflection was no ordinary girl, indeed. Why though? Why her? He could not wrap his mind around it. Stumped, and acknowledging he may have unwittingly conjured ill flashbacks, he apologized. "I had no idea. Forgive me for dredging up what must have been a traumatic experience for you."

"It's okay, Mr. Dornez." Seras shrugged. "You didn't mean to."

"You are very generous, Miss Victoria."

She fidgeted. "It's weird, being called 'Miss Victoria,'" she blurted. "I'm not an actual lady like Integra, you can just call me Seras."

"It is my personal belief that all young girls are ladies worthy of respect," Walter said. "But if you insist. Please, call me Walter."

When the child smiled, he thought that the circumstances of Seras' connection to Integra was a mystery he would solve patiently—and tactfully—and that regardless, he would follow his lady's lead and protect that smile.

xx

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Sir Shelby Penwood was as she remembered him. Kind, apprehensive and concerned. He was pleasantly surprised to hear she would be visiting. "Certainly I'll be happy to make time for you, Integral. Er, nothing's wrong, is it?"

"No. I would just like to see you."

"Well," he said, sounding mightily unconvinced, "alright. We can meet and discuss later tomorrow."

"Then I'll look forward to our fencing match, Sir Penwood."

"Wha— _fencing match?_ Integral, you know I can't fence—"

Of course, poor Sir Penwood's protests fell on deaf ears, as had his grandson's.

She neared the dining room to see Walter gesticulating and Seras giggling over a plate of dessert cake, and felt the weight in her heart lessen. They would have gotten along sooner or later and she was glad it was sooner.

She walked on. Cake had become spoiled for her.

A summer day is long, but Integra felt it passing quickly, for it was winter within her. The winter raged and raged about the illusory nature of life and death and time. How had Alucard and Seras endured this sensation for so long? She admired them for it, admired the species she had once passionately disparaged. _The men would throw a fit_ , she snorted. _How far you've gone, Integral._

So the day passed, and the night returned.

She had a fitful sleep. Nightmares, deprived of one dreamscape, circled the gloom for another, and they ambushed hers. _Integra, Integral, Integrity, will you change us? Integra, Integral, Integrity, do you believe you will win?_ They laughed, and their laughter was familiar.

In contrast, she woke silently. Integra sat up in bed, her hair sticking to her skin, her vision blurred sans her glasses. She wrapped her fingers around her neck. Her throat was parched. She needed water.

She stumbled barefooted to the table by the windows and into the chair. She drank too fast and ended up coughing. The glass slipped from her fingers and water dribbled on the floor.

Her shoulders were cold.

They brushed against a garment hung over the back of the chair.

Alucard's coat. He had neglected to ask for it, and knowing him, he had manifested a new coat by now. Integra tutted. _Sloppy vampire. As sloppy as I am, or is that the other way around?_ At times she wondered how much of herself was Alucard's doing. She found solace in the fact that she had at least affected him in turn. The tears she had witnessed on that morning so long ago were proof.

As long as one could cry, it meant one was not lost—not yet, not completely.

Integra slid the coat over her shoulders, daring to think the weight comforting, the fabric soft, the scent tempting. She closed her eyes.

Shadows slithered out of sight. They scuttered toward her, lifting themselves from the floor as tendrils and twisting around a chair leg to extend to her face. They were tangible, icy digits upon her cheek.

"Alucard," she said.

They thought she would order them out, yet she did not. She raised her own hand to press the phantom hand closer. The shadows trilled in both ecstasy and fear.

"Alucard," she said. "Never leave me."

xx

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* * *

NOTES

Marie de France, _Lanval_

Three o'clock in the morning is a lovely hour to update.

Oh my stars. I did not intend for this to take so long. I am terribly sorry for the long wait. At first I was occupied with Pokémon Moon, which was an absolute delight; but after finishing it I was hit with a bout of depression and lost a lot of strength. But I'm back now and I hope this chapter will be your balm. Your words were precious to me during this time, and I can't thank you enough. Let's continue on this journey.


	11. bitter, sweet

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Once, she had wondered what he would think of her wrinkles.

It doesn't matter what he thinks, the sensible side of her berated. He doesn't have the right to judge at all!

Yes, that was true. But she was human and she wondered.

She imagined.

 _Count,_ she might say to him, _see what you missed. This is what you left me to become_.

His expression would be the usual one of insidious mirth. But maybe, just maybe, she could glimpse in those inhuman eyes a bit of rue. He did not mean to be gone for so long. He did not mean to disobey her. The Count who had crossed the sea for her, had crossed an ocean of time, he would reply, _You mock me on the assumption that I bemoan your change_.

 _On the contrary, Countess_...

He might then trace each and every line on her face. The creases around her mouth and eye, formed by the rarest laughter.

Long ago, she had touched him in the same way. Fingers alight with unadulterated curiosity and subdued awe, familiarizing the flesh of the one who had saved her. The knight that was not a knight. The knight that was a monster. She had dared not give him her hand for his teeth were too sharp; would they not puncture her as he kissed?

Yet she had not been afraid of him. She had even told him he was beautiful, in more than three words.

Like snow and like miniature suns.

And as she had done before, he might now hold her in his deadly hands, pale lips parting to say, _My dear Countess, you have never been more beautiful._

She might scoff.

She might smile.

If only.

 _If only._

 _If only._

xx

xx

 **10.**

 **bitter, sweet**

xx

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In the evening on the day Seras Victoria came to Hellsing Manor, Walter trudged down to Alucard's lair to deliver his blood, per usual. The vampire was slouched in his pathetic excuse for a throne, looking thoughtful. A thoughtful Nosferatu, what horror. Walter did not attempt to engage. He deposited the packet, bowed curtly, and exited.

Well, that had been his intention.

"'All young girls are ladies worthy of respect'?"

Fucking great. "You heard that?" Walter asked lightly.

Alucard studied him with farcical concern. "It got me thinking I should stop calling you 'Angel' if it's going to make you develop such sanctimonious drivel." The concern was replaced with conceit. "After all, you certainly didn't treat _me_ with respect when I was a young girl."

Walter kept his face purposely null. "You were never a young girl, Alucard."

Alucard ignored him. "You know, I've never shown Integra that particular form of mine. How will she react, I wonder? Seeing as she's stooped to picking up strays, perhaps she'd prefer I be one, too."

"She won't prefer anything, because it won't matter to her," Walter said primly. "You won't be putting any guards down with that face. She sees right through you."

Again, his intention had been to deflate him, but evidently the universe was working against him today, for the beast merely grinned. It was then Walter realized a prominent article of clothing was missing.

 _Integra still has his coat with her..._

Red, red eyes matched the hue of the missing coat, the packet on the table and the liquid that surfeited their lives.

"Isn't that the catalyst."

Walter was on the verge of begging God for a ghoul outbreak. He did not know why he was so anxious for a distraction—by which Alucard's attention would finally be diverted from Integra—ah, who was he kidding.

He retreated upstairs, feeling a headache coming on.

That was yesterday.

Today, Walter brewed Integra's wake-up tea thanking the high heavens that there were no broken mirrors, missing ladies or new household members. Integra was, mercifully, in her room sleeping. He turned around with the tray.

"Bloody hell!"

A mass of shadows with no discernible shape was protruding out of the kitchen floor. It had the refrigerator open and was pilfering a month's worth of medical blood.

"Alucard!" Walter squawked, yet it—he—they—ignored him completely. The shadows disappeared with the booty.

With one hand Walter steadied the tray. With the other he palmed his face.

 _Bloody fucking buggering insomniac bastard,_ he swore as he managed to get up the stairs. _What's up with him?_ If it was not Integra that was acting odd, it was Alucard. He just hoped this was not a recurring theme. Walter shook his head, knocked on Integra's door and entered.

He swiftly set the refreshments down and went to tie the tassels of the curtains, before noticing a water glass upended on the table. Integra must have woken up during the night and drank in haste. Mildly uneased, he turned to the lady in question.

A strangled cough escaped Walter's throat.

Integra stirred. The red coat she had wrapped around her rustled.

The shade of red was unmistakable in the light. Alucard's coat— _again_.

A muted sort of horror rose from the depths of his soul as Integra opened her eyes and sat up. She seemed neither surprised to find him there nor aware of what she wore over her nightgown.

"Walter. What time is it?" Rather than waiting for a reply, she retrieved her glasses and read the clock. "Nine? You left me to oversleep?"

"It's the weekend, my lady," he reminded her faintly. Then, "Integra, is that Alucard's coat?"

So much for tact.

Integra looked down at herself.

"Yes," she said.

And she wrapped the coat tighter around her.

There was not a single change in her countenance. If Walter knew his lady at all, if he knew her as well as he had always thought, she would have at least blushed, and taken it off. No, she would not have worn it in the first place. There were boundaries he had seen Integra employ when it came to Alucard. This was not it.

Where was this nonchalance coming from?

It was also _summer_.

Integra glanced at him when his silence lengthened. "I was cold," she explained.

"Ah."

"Is that Irish Breakfast?"

Integra went for her tea, and Walter mechanically went after her to pour her a cup. _Pull yourself together, Angel. A coat is a coat. It's not even the point you should be worrying about the most!_ "I can't help but be concerned. Are you sure you're not ill?"

She sipped. "Truly, Walter. I have never been better."

He phrased his next question carefully. "Alucard was up late. He seemed...ravenous. Do you have any idea why?"

Her expression was unreadable. "No."

Well, then.

She paused and studied her drink. "You forgot the sugar."

Walter stared. "My lady, you've never taken Irish Breakfast with sugar."

A second passed.

"Because it makes it too sweet," Integra murmured. "I remember."

She said "remember" like it was dredging up scraps locked in the bottom of a dusty drawer. Sweetness was not a trait of the Hellsing director; the sugar bowl was removed from the tea tray when she assumed the position. It had been her order. Did she forget this as well? The cup of Irish Breakfast was held in listless hands, and its vapor spiraled into nothing.

"Don't you add sugar to your tea, Walter?" Integra asked.

"As it turns out, I do. It's a recent development." Walter thought of the two lumps of sugar he had begun to plop in each morning. "I find the older you grow, the sweeter your tooth."

"Why do you think that is?"

He had a feeling she was not asking about the physiological dulling of the human palate. Walter considered, then answered.

"Life's bitterness accumulates upon your tongue. Perhaps it's an internal longing to wash that taste away, however fleetingly, with sweets."

Integra slid the unsweetened cup onto its saucer. She smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes. "I hope there's not anything you're bitter about, here and now."

Walter chuckled. "I am nowhere near writing up a resignation letter, my lady, rest assured."

And she said, "What about aging? Are you bitter about aging, Walter?"

Her tone was only mildly curious, even casual, yet the question was a needle to the butler, pricking a cancerous mold in his heart. A mold that did not exist, but he imagined it did, as he imagined the bitterness of the cigarettes his little punk self had smoked coating his tongue. Was he bitter? Of his wrinkling face and stiffening joints, of the fanged grin he would never have the pleasure of ripping off? No—the answer was no. It had to be no. For here and for now, until, until—

 _Until what, Angel of Death?_

The voice that snickered in his mind was that of a young boy.

Walter inclined his head. "Why, for us John Bulls, growing old is one of life's pleasures."

Integra's reaction was somewhat jarring. Her expression took on an inexplicable cynicism, though there were no outward changes to her smile and unblinking gaze. "I'll have to see for myself if that is true."

"You have many years ahead of you, Integra."

She stood. "I should get ready for lunch at Sir Penwood's. Take care of Seras, and in the meantime, I want you to seek out tutors for her. Of _higher_ caliber."

"Much higher," Walter confirmed wryly.

Integra took off the coat— _Finally!_ —and draped it over the chair.

Walter was good at pretending.

He pretended not to notice how her fingers lingered on the fabric.

xx

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"I won't be long, Seras."

Integra felt the need to reassure the girl, though she would not be gone for more than a few hours. As much as she trusted Sir Penwood, Integra had no desire to expose Seras to the Round Table and their inevitable nosing. That they would eventually learn of her was also inevitable, but at least by then Seras would be less overwhelmed with the changes in her life, and surer of her place. This was her rightful place, here. Where she would be provided with the best of everything.

Except normalcy.

To Seras, being inside a huge manor with Integra and being inside a huge manor without Integra were two different things entirely. "Okay," she mumbled.

Integra peered into her eyes. They were outside, awaiting the chauffeur in front of the double doors. The sky was cloudy, but that was not what shaded the blues. "What's troubling you?"

Seras looked up at her plaintively. Then she looked left and right, as if she was fearful of her demons listening in on them. "I had a bad dream again. But it wasn't..." She hushed.

"Do you want to tell me?"

She shook her head. "I want to forget it. I don't want it to mean anything."

Knowing intimately that nothing became _something_ the moment it was uttered, and given irrevocable power, Integra did not pry. "Wait here," she said, and walked off.

She was back in less than a minute holding a daisy.

"Now." Integra pressed the flower into Seras' palm. "This is in exchange for your dream. I'm buying it from you, so you no longer have to worry."

The daisy resembled the sunny-side up eggs Seras ate for breakfast. It was small and fragile yet bright and immaculate in her hand. It was a terribly high price for an awful, awful dream that had made no sense and had been unlike all her other dreams. She opened her mouth to protest, but Integra held a finger to her lips. Seras blushed.

"You're a part of this household, Seras. My household. I protect everyone in it, with everything I have, with every method that may suffice."

The car arrived then, and Integra left on that note.

Sir Penwood, whom she had last paid her respects to as a bronze monument, looked better in the flesh. Mustached, rotund, with a perpetually sweating worry line between his brows which he dabbed at with an ever-present handkerchief, he greeted Integra at the door. "Coming all the way out here in this muggy weather, Integral. You didn't have to go through the trouble."

She gazed at this brave, brave man— _England's Protector_ , she had called him, and meant it. Gregory had never quite believed her, but really, _of course_ she lost her left eye trying to duel him for fun one day. Sir Shelby Penwood deserved to be a legend, and if being a legend entailed one's story becoming rather tall, then was this not a sweeter tale?

 _Good hunting, Sir Penwood._

She smiled. "Good day, Sir Penwood."

"Yes, yes," he said gruffly, yet inwardly he was touched that Integra had gone out of her way to visit him. "I'm telling you, I can't fence. I don't even think I can fit into my old gear."

"No need to be harsh on yourself, Sir," Integra said. "You're as dashing as always."

The knight appeared disgruntled and wary and flattered all at once. "Now you're just making fun of me. Come on in."

They made small talk. How were her studies going? Was Walter attending to her properly? And her—er—vampire, was he, er, behaving? Integra was not bothered by these questions. They reminded her of what she had missed most about Sir Penwood: his awkward, yet genuine concern for her. He had always been like an uncle to her, instead of her father's weasel of a brother. He had, in retrospect, never let her down.

But she, the gullible fool she had been, how had she repaid him?

"Integral?"

"Yes?"

"You seemed a bit ill there." Penwood glanced dubiously at the table. "Er, the meal's not disagreed with you, has it?"

"My apologies, Sir. It's not the meal. I tend to get easily distracted these days."

"Well, it's a pivotal time in your life." Penwood twiddled his thumbs. "To tell you the truth, I never imagined you would ask to visit when I called yesterday. This quarter's Table meeting is not far off, after all—that was why I called, to confirm your schedule."

Integra refrained from curling her lips. "I was under the impression that my schedule mattered little."

Penwood winced. "Integral, you mustn't think that. Hugh and the chaps, I know they're rather—old-school—but—" He heaved a sigh. "I thought you were just a little girl when I first heard you were to be director, yet here you are. Doing more than I've ever done, busier than I've ever been busy in all my years of—warming up a seat in the Council—"

Poor Sir Penwood. He had no idea she had outgrown the need for the point he was trying to make some thirty years ago. The only problem she had with the meeting was the likelihood of her being bored to tears. But she listened patiently.

"I guess, what I'm trying to say is, you should never doubt your place among us."

"Sir, I am assured of my place," Integra said. "Very assured."

Penwood blinked. "Oh."

"And so should you be of yours."

"Huh?"

"I couldn't be running the organization without the helicopters you provided me," she remarked, and Sir Penwood groaned.

"You're on a roll today, aren't you?"

Integra laughed, and added a cube of sugar to her tea.

xx

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The white of his eyes was bloodshot. He could feel them, the tiny swollen vessels. Even this imperishable body of his protested fatigue every now and then; perhaps it was his subconscious, mimicking human frailty as a result of being surrounded by them night and day.

Once, he had pointed out a laggardly healing bruise and offered, not entirely in jest, a drop of his blood. Of course, Integra had turned her nose up at him.

"It's a part of being human that these things take time."

Ever the vampire hunter, my Master. Shooting down the monster with mere words. He had dissolved into the floor, his laughter bittersweet.

Against that same floor echoed the footsteps of the manor's inhabitants. They rang dully in his ears. None of them were Integra's. If there were hundreds, thousands, _millions_ walking above him, he would still find her. And when he did, she would only be annoyed that he had killed those numbers between them.

Or would she be annoyed? He no longer knew what to expect from her.

Alucard shifted in his throne, the movement less cumbersome without his coat. Why had he not reconjured it yet? Sometimes he surprised himself. But it came across as cheap to him, to be wearing another, when one was upstairs in his master's bedroom. One warmed by the heat of her flesh, perfumed by her scent, and privy to her command.

 _Never leave me._

Did she say that?

Yes. Yes, she did.

He threw his head back and laughed, and if it sounded hoarse, sounded bittersweet, he did not notice. His hair spindled madly in the air before falling and veiling his face.

First a kiss and now this.

Oh, he was a connoisseur of lust, and he had been lusted after, certainly, and they all wanted _something_ from him. His body, his blood, his bite, his _love_... Yet never the lot at once, and they all ended the same. In the end they wanted him gone.

 _Alucard_.

The front doors of the manor opened.

 _Never leave me_.

He cast his eyes up at the ceiling.

Integra was back.

Her steady steps stopped halfway to greet Walter, and again to greet the new girl. When they reached her room he tuned her out. He would not seek her today. Or tomorrow. Or the following week. Until her touches ceased to flay him, her words to haunt him, and he degenerated to being content with their previous nothings, savoring the memory of a single kiss.

 _Content? You?_

The No-Life King shut his eyes and willed himself to sleep.

 _You insatiable creature._

He succeeded, for a couple of hours or so.

Footsteps.

Her footsteps.

Closer. Closer, closer, closer. His shadows shivered. Crimson irises stared at the entrance of his lair with desire and dread. _Closer_. Her essence tugged at his, caused his body to gravitate almost unwittingly. He could not recall another instance in which her arrival so tormented him. How the tables have turned.

"Master? Can that be my Master? Come to visit me in my sordid sanctuary? Gracing me with her presence?"

There was a chuckle from Integra as she emerged little by little down the stairwell. She had bathed. Moisture still clung to her pale tresses and flooded his nostrils with bergamot. When she at last descended—in every sense of the word, for setting foot in his court of none was tantamount to delivering oneself to the Devil—he bared his teeth. Alucard could not help it. She looked sacramental.

Especially with his coat held to her white blouse like a splash of blood.

"Count."

Integra uttered that solitary word and grew quiet. Her eyes landed on his coffin.

Alucard waved a lazy hand toward it. "Care to give it a try?"

The look she gave him was condescending, even from the distance. _Touché_.

"Not until I die."

Deeper she ventured into the darkness of his court, in actuality hers. There was nothing in here that did not belong to her. And it seemed that recently the not-so-little lady had become too aware of it, of the pathetic extent to which he was ready to debase himself if only she would allow him. This was his vulnerability. "Why are you here, my Master? Why not summon me?" His smile was a mask.

So was hers. "I have realized," Integra said, "that sometimes, I must be the one to return."

She approached the wine table and into the circumference of a feeble candlelight. Her lips pursed at the empty packets littering the vicinity. "Since you are such a slob." She tossed the coat into his lap.

It was warm. It bore her scent.

The shameless creature buried his face into it and inhaled deeply. Behind his black curls merely an eye was visible, and it swiveled up at her.

"You didn't need to."

"I asked to lend it," Integra said simply. Unfazed by his display. "Anyway, you're being rude. The least you could do is not keep me standing."

Alucard watched her with a hooded gaze, half-drunk on her scent, as she wandered over to where his coffin lay. The hem of her blue skirt brushed the side. Three nights ago, he would have been delighted to have her in his snare. Now it felt like he was the game ensnared, by a bait of his own making. Ah, how cruel his master was. "Planning to stay for a while? Alas, I have nothing to offer but a bottle of claret, and the poor company of yours truly. Surely you'd rather frolic with that stray you brought in."

She seemed amused by that phrase, for some reason.

"What a pity." Integra's amusement waned. "Perhaps, then, I should leave."

Yes.

 _No._

"Stay."

She did.

Integra sat down on the coffin lid. Her fingers swept over the polished ebony in a familiar trajectory, and came to rest on the symbol at the top. "Why the cross, Alucard? Is it out of spite?"

"No less than what you're exuding," he said sardonically.

"Is it spite that keeps me here?" she asked. "I've wondered that myself."

When her palate betrayed her today, she had thought that maybe the answer was not meant to be convoluted.

"I think I've been deluding myself. I've underestimated how vindictive I can be. I told myself I had forgiven, but that was a wish more than anything."

He was out of his throne. Her vampire was behind her, with the coat. His? Hers? Did it matter? He slid it onto her shoulders.

"You've twisted into a fine vindictive form," Alucard agreed. He let out a grisly laugh. His nails were claws beneath the skin of his gloves. "It makes me almost jealous of that incarnation of mine in your dream."

Integra smiled, bitterly.

Yet his fingers, with their monstrous claws sweetly caressed her shoulders, to whisper against her nape, just under her blouse collar. And those cold, hushed strokes moved up the slope of her neck, to her throat, to her chin, and tilted her head back. She gazed up at him.

She did not stop him.

"But not envious," he murmured.

Above her, her Count was without edges, the black of his hair and the black of his suit rendering him indistinguishable from the enveloping dusk. She thought, since when had she loved the darkness?

Integra remembered playing hide and seek as a child, how she would choose the obscurest nooks, and fall asleep.

She remembered crawling through the vents, and how despite the seemingly endless gloom, she had only been frightened for her life.

And at the end, in his cell, in the coppery stale darkness, she had sat down beside him. _Don't mind me._

 _At least I won't die alone._

She reached up. She traced his jawline.

"You look tired."

Bloodshot eyes drooped at her touch. Alucard bowed his head, and his hair spilled into hers.

"You know why, cruel, cruel Integra."

"Yes. Yet though I am cruel, you will never leave me."

His lips curved crookedly. "I heard you the first time."

xx

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NOTES

*Sips tea*

*Looks at calendar*

*Spits tea out*

January 19? _January 19?_ What do you mean, it's already January 19?

Wow. Uh, happy new year, everyone. Again, thank you and sorry for the long wait. I wrote quite a bit, scrapped it, wrote again, scrapped it again... There is something about turning a new year that makes one simultaneously hope and despair. I was at a rather difficult place, but presently I've gotten better. I wish this year will be a happy, lucky and safe time for all of you, and I hope I will be able to bring more and better bits to read. It _has_ been quite a while since I uploaded a one shot, hasn't it?


	12. ouroboros

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 **11.**

 **ouroboros**

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Spite. It was an ugly word, but Integra Hellsing could be quite spiteful. Had she not ordered the deaths of men without mercy and with a smile on her face, just to prove a point? In that respect they were not so different, the master and the servant, cliché though the statement may be. It was always as he had said: he was merely the weapon, she was the one whose will pulled the trigger.

Thus today, in this hour before nightfall, in this dark chamber, she was here to willfully pull the trigger once more. This time on the splintering husk around her heart. Dare she reveal the raw organ underneath?

 _You've guarded your heart jealously all these years, and here's where you ended up. Here again._

 _Over, and over and over and over again. We chase each other's shadows._

Ouroboros.

Alucard seemed as lost in thought as she was, unfocused. His hair danced in barely contained spirals around his visage, while his inflamed eyes held an unsettling kind of beauty, one reminiscent of those explosions deep in the sky that created veins of destructive colors. Silly vampire. Why did he insist on torturing himself? He could will these imperfections away, they were only illusions. Almost, fleetingly, she could envision him as a living, breathing human. And that would have been a pleasant notion—if unwanted.

For she wanted his monstrous beauty.

"Yet how ironic," Alucard said suddenly, as though he was commenting on her desire. But Integra saw he had not meant to say it out loud. What had he been thinking about?

(Once...)

Once, a prince craved paradise.

His definition of paradise was neither rich nor grandiose. He simply wanted to stop hurting. He wanted to stop feeling unclean. He fell to his knees and begged and begged for salvation.

None came, and he realized,

Ah, a living prayer is nothing.

So he led his men to their deaths, and sent them up; then his kingdom, then bits and pieces of himself, until there was none to send. Yet still he could not reach paradise.

At his execution he realized,

Ah, God is nothing.

So he lost everything.

The things, the lands, the people he had yearned for slipped beyond his reach, left him with a thirst not even the world's lakes could quench, and a hunger that gnawed at his very soul. They were ephemeral, his wants. The things became broken, the lands barren, the people insipid bags of blood. That which he consumed were remnants. And it was his fault.

He destroyed beauty because he knew it was not his to keep.

But now, holding this beauty, this _integrity_ so close _so close_ , the monster was lost as to what he should do—what he could do. He could crush her neck, he could paint her skin red, he could drink in her chokes and gasps— _wouldn't that be a sight?_ For she had brought herself here, looking like sacrifice, and what cruel god could resist such an offering?

 _But you're not a god_.

He felt her heartbeats.

 _You're not even a king_.

Yet how ironic.

He felt her breath passing through her throat as she asked, "What is?"

Had he said that out loud?

"That which I sought and eluded me when I was my own master," Alucard answered, "is now in my grasp when I am nothing."

Integra dignified the implications of his statement with silence. The touch of her fingers upon his jaw grew more insistent. He saw himself reflected in her eyes. Trapped in those clear blue pools. She was reminding him that he, too, was in her grasp.

 _Ouroboros_ , he mused. _We'll end up devouring each other without knowing who started first._

"What was it that you sought?"

"What was it that I sought?" He laughed hollowly. "What is it that I seek? I have wanted many. But in the end they were surrogates for one. One to replace the God I had forsaken, yet who had forsaken me first."

His voice faintly took on the rough, accented tone of the man he had been centuries ago, whose name was not Alucard. His form blurred at the edges and it was only the cold, smooth flesh atop her fingers that told Integra he was there in the present with her.

"It drives a man mad."

"Then am I a surrogate as well?"

His eyes refocused quickly, and it was Alucard, not the mad king, who was staring down at her.

"No, my Master," he said. "You are unparalleled."

The coat rustled between them as he brought his hands down to the base of her neck. A gloved thumb dared to jostle the top button of her blouse. She was so close, but he was a wretch and he wanted her _closer_. He wanted to cup her heart where all her delicate stirrings of life originated and delude himself it was his to keep, forever, until she invariably shrugged him off, left him in his mock throne and pretended the next evening that nothing had happened.

Always, always, those he wanted were beyond his reach.

Alucard waited.

Her fingers slid from his face, leaving little tracks of warmth that rapidly cooled. _She'll rebuke me now. She'll slap my hands away._

Integra leaned back against him and adjusted the red coat over her arms.

His thumb froze on the button. Alucard refrained from shuddering. _This_ Integra...

"You're not running."

"I don't run," she said.

He lowered his head and crooned sibilantly against her ear. "I think you know that running is not necessarily a coward's tactic. When the monster in his natural habitat is behind you, Integra, aware of your blood and how it will look staining your clothes and mine..." The thumb slowly pushed the button out. "You should ask yourself, how could the hunter not only be so cruel..." It loosened. "But also careless?"

She turned and caught his burning eyes. "It's not being careless if I'm not in any trouble."

"Then what do you call this?"

"I believe it's called flirtation," Integra said.

There was a palpable pause.

"Or courtship, whatever applies to this tête-à-tête between us."

His body tore from her as if seared. Alucard stood rigid, devoid of expression.

"Courtship," he repeated.

"Isn't it?"

He stared.

"What's the matter, Count? You're not getting cold feet, are you?"

She had not worn her gloves, for she wanted to touch him. She had not worn her cross, for she wanted him to touch her. In the past, in her naiveté, she had believed that wearing them would keep him at a distance, contain the flames between them. _Hah_. Like they had not been engulfed already.

She was like him. She wanted many, many things, but it all came down to one.

"I've been thinking."

Last night, she had curled up in bed with the coat wrapped around her, thinking.

 _About how everything about you is paradoxical. Such as this coat of yours that is soft and rough all at once. How your touch is cold and hot all at once. How we are master and servant, yet not only that_.

Most times, they were Master and Servant. Oftentimes, they were Integra and Alucard. Rarely, they were Countess and Count. Their labels had been better barriers than their gloves and crosses, and her stubbornness and his self-loathing, their duty and pride had turned them into ghosts of their own desires.

 _And there are enough ghosts in this house_.

"Tell me," she began. "If I were to reciprocate this courtship, what would happen?"

She almost thought he had died a second time with how unresponsive he was, when his pale mouth twisted and opened in pained apprehension.

"What?"

"Would you lose respect for me as your master?"

"What are you saying?" he whispered.

"I'm not here to be your God. I will not be a replacement of any kind. And to this you have said I am unparalleled." The corners of her lips curved up, yet it did not resemble a smile. "But isn't that a rather cursed existence, to walk a straight line alone to its end, and pretend it is fine because that's what is expected of a... _line_ of duty..."

"My Master," Alucard bit out, "if you did not appreciate my comment, you could have just said so."

"There will be no running today, and no lies," Integra stated. "I am here for one thing."

Rarely, they were Countess and Count. Even then, he would kneel before her. And it was what he called her when it was scarcely a title in the country she served, and she was without an earl; it was what she called him when all he had to his name was a casket of dirt. It was nonsensical.

Just like them.

"I'm here to take you up on your offer, Count. Kiss me."

xx

xx

 _A fragment of a time lost._

xx

It happened without fanfare.

Past the witching hour he trudged into the sitting room with the demeanor of one who had battled Hades himself, and the nineteen-year-old knight tutted.

Not more than three hours ago he had been positively pouting at the mediocrity of the mission. Her vampire was, however, a vain creature and took pleasure in exaggerating his long-faded detriments as though the blood and gore spattered across his frame were anything substantial. Integra allowed a cursory look at him, and then her glasses flashed back to the book in her lap. She had her own repartee.

Alucard knelt before her chaise, sweeping his hat into his chest. The acrid mixture of gunfire and death stung her nose.

"The target has been destroyed, my Master."

When she did not react, he lifted his head. He scoffed at the spine of the book.

"I did warn you that if you were to stain the carpet again, there would be consequences," Integra said lightly, as she perused a worn copy of Bram Stoker's _Dracula_.

"That book is inaccurate," Alucard muttered.

A cigar stub was smoking on a tray. The pungent odor of tobacco pervaded the room. The mise-en-scène had been deliberately set up to irritate him, and the finishing touch was the unattainable maiden lounging with that dratted book. His fangs grated on his lower teeth. He was irritated, but not altogether in her intended way. If he were susceptible to something as superficial as the pleasantness of a scent then he would have seduced any young-blooded female. It irritated him that she seemed to expect a mere human drug to detract from his awareness of _her_.

She was not stupid.

"Walter hasn't yet said anything, but I can tell he is this close to expressing his grievances." She made no gesture with this information, indicating that "this" was probably the width of his monofilament wires. "I've gathered that the entrails are particularly tricky to wash off."

Alucard cocked his head. "I thought you would rather a visual, Master." He protruded a ragged arm. "The vermin screamed and flailed when I picked him up by the cavity in his spleen, see? It was pathetic. These recent batches have no class. All they do is make a mess."

"It amuses me to hear that from you," Integra drawled, eyes stoutly remaining on the book, though its text did not quite register.

A red and white, spidery appendage crawled over the top of the pages and pushed down. The start of a rebuke formed in her throat, which got stuck when her gaze locked on the crimson impression his wet digits left. _The eponymous vampire leaves his fingerprints on his tale..._

Only they were not fingerprints. The scraps of fabric which he never took off made them into an abstract testament to his inhumanness. Integra compared the gloved hand to her own. Hers was gripping the bottom of the pages, clean and bare. There could not have been a starker contrast.

"You're defiling my book."

"It defiled me first."

"Your gloves are filthy."

"It's not the only thing that's filthy."

Integra narrowed her eyes. His turned into crescents. He was laughing at her.

In truth, she was not as angry with him as she should be. Walter would have said she was being too lenient, but what the butler did not realize was that Alucard eventually cleaned up after himself. He simply missed a few spots. On purpose.

 _He can be such a child._

And it would have been easy if that was what she always saw him as. He made it easy, projecting himself as a querulous creature sorely in need of a toy. The part of her that she kept barred, however, projected another.

 _The man he had been long ago. A man who returned bearing the blood of his enemies on his armor._

 _His gauntlets would have been removed by a faceless woman, who would have said_ —

"Take them off."

His eyebrows rose.

"Your gloves, you git," Integra added in a hurry. "Take your _gloves_ off."

"Oh?" Alucard leaned forward from his kneeling position. He licked his lips. Slowly. "Are you sure you don't mean _clothes_?"

She grabbed his hand. The book fell to the floor.

His hand was limp in hers, yet when Integra glanced up his pupils were dilated sanguine, his facial muscles taut with desire, that foreign familiar emotion. In turn she was coated with the blood of his enemies.

Her enemies.

She divested one of its confinement, and almost shivered at the meeting of their exposed flesh. She may have heard him growl. His fingers were long, bony, but at the same time supple, while hers were riddled with calluses gained from fencing and target practice—with weapons much lighter than those he wielded. Yet another testament.

She skimmed the back. It was unmarked. As it so happened, only she could remove the gloves with their sigils.

 _If I took off the other, you could leave. You could leave and never return._

"Master," Alucard murmured, "Integra, is this to be my punishment?"

Integra glanced at him again.

 _When that day comes, don't._

"Shh."

 _Don't leave._

She flipped over to his palm and saw the thin grooves running helter-skelter. They were painted by the blood that had rubbed off on her, a far cry from the impersonal blots left upon the book so carelessly discarded.

He had been human, once upon a time. In an older tale he had been a man who returned bearing the blood of his enemies—

 _My enemies_

—on his armor. And his gauntlets would have been removed by a woman who would have said—

"Welcome back." Her voice was quiet.

 _But he can't go back._

"A job well done." Integra began to withdraw. "Count."

His responding smile was a brittle thing.

Alucard did not attempt to snatch her back. He let his bare hand—his branded hand—buoy in her tepid current before having it drop to his side, a castaway weight. Integra, expressionless, passed him his glove. He pulled it on quickly, wanting to preserve her heat, and retrieved the book for good measure. Their masks were in place and he was to act the part of the obedient dog.

But he knew that she knew that he would not be going without a last word. Again, she was not stupid.

Alucard stood, devouring her blonde and dark-skinned form in the sole way he could, with his eyes. He answered.

"Countess."

Her pulse jumped.

Integra looked sharply at him, seeming uncertain if she had even heard him right.

Then, like a whisper, she let out a laugh.

xx

 _Lost, forever._

xx

xx

He did not move.

"Well?" Integra asked.

He made no sound.

The air in the chamber had turned into a suffocating thing. Her heartbeats had quickened. How curious. They were so loud yet she had not realized. She had been so fixated on that single moment.

 _Kiss me_.

He was doing no such thing.

His shadows had also quietened. They had become solid with the darkness, and it was Alucard who was rooted in its midst, an effigy in black, peculiarly breakable.

He was gazing at her with doubt.

"Ah," she uttered. It left a bitter tang. "I see."

 _I should have known_.

Yes. Perhaps it was too much to expect.

In the end this in itself may only be a facade. I am certainly not the Integra you have known, nor are you the Alucard I have waited, and this is merely a substitute of that which I desired.

Once, it had been that your regard for me outweighed what I was willing to accept. Yet three years or even ten cannot compare to thirty, and now it is my regard for you that outweighs everything.

Quite literally, I might love you too much.

 _Great_ , the voice that sounded like old Seras said. _Now just tell him!_

 _I told you to hush_.

Integra lifted a hand to reach out for him, then decided against it. What remained between them was the air, the silence, the distance of three decades.

"I've come at the wrong time."

Time had become her cruel hope. She had spent time in this very room glaring down at this very coffin and the slab of concrete sitting on it much too like a gravestone and contemplated on whether or not to kick it to pieces. And as she had done in that time in the past, she got up. The coat dragged at her shoulders, but Integra was hardly aware of that. She was aware of the anger rising inside at both him and herself—mostly herself.

"Is it so implausible to you, my acceptance?" she sighed. "It's only a kiss, Alucard."

Finally, he parted his lips. "A kiss," he said. It was jagged. Broken as shards of glass. "A kiss and then what?"

"You tell me. It was your offer."

"An offer you ridiculed, Integra."

"I reconsidered," Integra said evenly. "Don't make me repeat myself."

"And why now? Why this?"

"Why not?"

Alucard smiled, a wreck of a smile, and the hair sticking to his face cracks in the snow. "Whatever you've been thinking, it can't have been this. Do you know—do you have any idea what it is that you're offering? Don't tempt the beast. Let him be content with what he already has. It'll keep him in line, because he can't expect anything else." The cracks in the snow distorted. His mouth formed a snarl. "But with what you're offering now, I'll destroy you. I'll destroy you like everything that has passed my hands."

"You won't. I've found that I'm quite durable."

The monster wanted to prove her wrong. That she was deluded, that this imprudence of hers was as fragile as the slender neck which he could crush easily, so easily—he surged forward, digits gnarling down to snag her throat and throttle it—and stopped short. His fingertips teetered on the edge of her skin, hesitant to even touch.

And there and then she seized his hands and pressed them to her throat in a hold that was shockingly blistering to him despite having caressed that same flesh mere moments ago. _Cruel! Careless!_ She wrapped them close without an alteration in her composure.

"There now. This is all but an invitation. Destroy me as you have said."

"Are you mad?" he hissed.

"No," she said, pressing his fingers harder into the column of her neck, relentless. "Simply demonstrating that I know exactly what I'm getting into."

Integra shoved his hands away and stepped back.

"But again, I've come at the wrong time."

She turned. She went. Farther, farther, farther. She walked up the stairs, leaving him there, in his empty court.

The house was quiet. Yet never silent. It groaned under the burden of its age and the concerns and interests of its occupants, from something as pleasing as supper to something as harrowing as unrequited love, or rather a love that had no proper recipient. For the visage which the lady of the house had drawn privately in her memories was of the one who had vanished into the ashes of war. Oh, she knew she was being horribly unreasonable toward the one with her now in the present; they were the same and she had kissed that same mouth. It tasted the same. It smiled the same. But she was spiteful. And she had many things to say to the vanishing smile.

Or a few. Or none at all.

She walked up and far, the farthest she could get away from him inside, to a room equally empty and sagged against a window. The moon, full and fair, was ascending between clouds of indigo and scarlet, and the minutes it took for its glow to cast her shadow on the floor felt like centuries.

"Integra?"

Another, smaller shadow appeared outside in the corridor.

She straightened. "Come here, my darling."

There was a tiny squeak. Seras shuffled into her line of vision, cheeks aflame. "D-darling?"

She beckoned, and the girl came shyly but eagerly to her. A daisy was in her hair.

"I found you, all by myself!" Seras burst out. She was beaming with pride. "I told Walter that I could find you, Integra. I just had a feeling."

"I suppose that means I won't win at hide and seek with you," Integra replied, with a lightness fabricated. "Did I make you look for long, Seras? I must have lost track of time."

"I don't mind. I understand this place a lot better now." Seras peered around. "What are you doing here in the dark?"

Yes, what was she doing here?

Waiting, again?

"And," Seras tilted her head, "you're wearing that coat."

Integra did not glance down. "So I am."

The child noted the strange deep red color. "It's very pretty on you," she said honestly, though she was aware it had belonged to someone much stranger, and where was that person anyway, if he worked for Integra? There were still many mysteries here. "But I don't want you to be cold. Integra, please don't be sick."

"I'm not," Integra said, in the way she had when the doctor had broken the news to her at forty-seven.

Seras stuck a palm to her brow. Integra stayed put.

"You don't feel too warm..." Seras trailed off.

Ever the little nurse.

"I told you I wasn't sick." Integra touched the daisy in front of her. "What about you? Have you been wearing this the entire day?"

Seras, abruptly bashful, hid her hands behind her and ducked. "You gave it to me."

Often, that was all it took. An insignificance, given by someone of utmost significance.

"It's wilting."

The lady of a house where none were satisfied—in a garment which clung to an illusion, and among those whom she loved with a heart that had never been a telltale heart—briefly basked in the glow beating down on her back, and decided the night was young still to succumb to its woolgathering.

"Look, Seras. Isn't the moon beautiful?"

The child glimpsed the moon for the first time that evening, over Integra's shoulder. "It is!"

Integra locked arms with her and spun her to the door. "Come on. Let's go decimate a field of daisies."

"Eh?" Seras squealed. "You mean— _kill them?"_

"They'll be gone by the end of the season, when the gardener mows the grass. So let's cut down on his work. We'll pull them up," Integra announced, oddly determined. "We'll put them in vases, we'll make them into posies and crowns and whatever it is girls your age fancy."

"Really?" Seras lit up at the idea. "But—Walter—and dinner—"

"They can wait."

There were many questions Seras wanted to ask.

Integra, Integra, why do your eyes look so sad when you mention daisies?

Integra, Integra, who is that man, and why do you wear his coat?

"Integra," her big mouth chose to say instead, "am I really your darling?"

It had been a day and then some, and Seras was only beginning to understand. That there were things the people in the manor spoke of in hushed tones, with furtive slants toward the corners where the dark seemed especially coiled (and stared out, with red, red eyes) in hunger (the kind a beast could possess, a monster could possess; the kind a man in his glorified cell, nosing the trace of bergamot left on his gloves, could possess). Seras could not hear the cries coming from those corners. They were reserved for the lady beside her.

 _Only a kiss?_

 _Only a kiss?_

 _Only a kiss?_

 _Lady, all I possess is this hunger; should you place anything in these hands, I shall eat it raw._

(Eat it, then.)

And because Seras could not hear the cries, she waited several excruciating seconds for Integra to blink and respond.

"What?"

"Nothing!" Seras said hastily.

"Nothing is hardly ever nothing," Integra chided. She was guilty of that herself. "Forgive me, Seras. I wasn't paying attention. Won't you say it again?"

Seras stopped in the middle of a corridor. "Am I—" She pulled at her fingers. "Am I really your darling?"

Integra watched her carefully.

"It's silly but—I just wondered if—" Seras braced herself. "If you meant it and—"

"You two are strangely alike," Integra said then.

 _Two?_ "Who?"

Integra plucked the daisy from Seras' hair and smoothed it out on her palm. "You two," she readdressed, "seem to be under the impression that I say things I don't mean to say. Quite the contrary, I mean them very much."

"I just wondered, because already, you're the most important person to me in the whole world," Seras whispered, her voice affected with the quality of confessing into a diary.

The lady of the house tucked the dying flower back in her ward's hair.

"My Seras. Without doubt," she took in a breath, "of all living beings in this world, I love you best."

xx

xx

God will descend from the heavens.

 _God will descend from the heavens!_

Did he?

Did he descend on that crimson field under the rising sun?

 _No_.

Instead the Devil ascended. He ascended from the depths of hell and gave you his nectar. He bade, _Drink, drink, drink to your enemies, to your men and fallen kingdom, to the Father who has failed us both._ And you did. You thirsted, you hungered more than you had ever hungered in your life, and where gravity implodes, a void is formed.

 _Lord, the wine of vines can no longer quench me; I shall now drink the wine of veins._

Ah, so did it quench your thirst?

 _No._

What must you consume, then?

The summer evening had brought unwelcome guests to feast on her flesh when she shucked off her shoes to walk barefooted in the daisy grass. Integra sat on her bed, huffing at the tiny pinpricks around her toes. _Cheeky little varmints_. She had never had the problem of bug bites during her smoking years. A rare perk of the habit.

Not that it had been any help shooing the biggest of them all.

"This voyeuristic tendency of yours is getting a bit repetitive, isn't it?" she quipped.

The shadows in a certain corner of her room flickered.

She stuck a foot out. "Jealous?"

Integra did not jolt when her ankle was grabbed by a cold hand.

He was even messier than the state she had left him in, if that were possible. His sable locks writhed in the moonlight, serenading it silently in bizarre shapes, and his frame hunched over her foot made him appear more massive yet scraggly. If his face had not been young, if it had been one rougher and lined, she would have seen him as the man whose name was not Alucard.

But it was.

Wordlessly Alucard moved the hand holding her ankle down the curve of her heel and under it, where his thumb started to stroke, almost idly. Integra shuddered. He had assumed this same position in the library two days ago, but the way he was touching her was nothing so chaste.

"Is this the right time, Alucard?"

"My Master is asking me?" he rasped. It was an inhuman sound. "It appears that my Master exists in her own time, and thus my answer will be false."

"No one is a master of time," she said. "Let's not be its fools, and reach a compromise."

Alucard smiled faintly. "There's an order to these things, Integra."

He lowered his mouth, and kissed the sole of her foot.

xx

xx

 _Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks_

 _Within his bending sickle's compass come:_

 _Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,_

 _But bears it out even to the edge of doom._

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

NOTES

William Shakespeare, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" (Sonnet 116)

Yes, it's really me! You're not hallucinating! You've really read through a new chapter of _Satis_ _!_ Wow. Hey guys. It's almost April, the cruelest month. I can't believe how fast the months go by. It's so humbling. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support and patience. My new job has really taken a toll on me and I feel uneasy even in this state of employment, and it took a while to muster the time and strength for this update. But while it is late, I poured my soul into this—as usual—so I hope that you enjoyed it and that it has given you a splash of brightness in your day. Have a lovely spring, everyone. I will try to come back as soon as I can.


	13. lunacy

xx

xx

 **12.**

 **lunacy**

xx

xx

With her gone, it was death in the chamber.

She had cast the die, left him at her mercy. The monster succumbed to the madness he had accused his master of. He began to claw at himself. Slowly, then the black silk of his suit was reduced to ribbons and the white snow of his skin was reduced to gouges and the red sacrilege of his sanguinity was reduced to puddles on the basement floor.

There it was. The heart he wanted to throw at her feet.

Cold and dead.

 _Little coquette, you say such pretty words, but what will you do with this once you have it?_

His crimsoned hands dropped wetly to his sides. _Perfect_ , he deemed. _A malfunctioning pet. She would be delighted_. Ah. If what she wanted was a kiss, if what she wanted was even this worthless organ, all he had to do was deliver. So what was the problem?

What was he afraid of?

It's only a kiss, Alucard.

From far away his sanity rang a bell. It was a moonlit night. Luna had been gaining on her pulchritude this past week and was now unleashing her lunacy upon them. Not to be a captive of any entity but one, he reconvened. His blood spiraled sluggishly beneath his boots, and the tissue around the heart that had not met air in centuries knitted back together.

So he was _here_.

He was here, her captive.

And there was little he could do but close his eyes.

Her bare foot—aptly, an oft fetishized part of the body—smelled of the earth, the grass, the evening dew and daisies. There was a lace of them sitting on her vanity woven with a child's clumsy adoration. _Pitiful_ , Alucard thought. _Don't you know?_

 _She's fit for roses._

Beside the daisies was the coat, folded, as red as the roses he envisioned—he spared it only a glance.

He kissed the foot and felt her tremble.

The vampire was more aware of her than he had ever been, aware of her as he was of silver against his skin. Her presence pained him now in that exquisite way, yet he was here, tending to her. _As a suitor must. But no suitor would be so obscene_. As certain as no beast would be so devout.

This, was merely another facet of their nonsensical courtship.

In his kiss he dared to protrude his fangs, and graze them against her smooth flesh in a manner lighter than a feather. One half of the conglomerate of souls within him clamored for the sweetness _bitterness_ underneath—he, to answer her query, was not above jealousy. Alucard did not crave her as a dead man. He craved her as a dying man, and it was a state surely worse than death. The dying remained crawling on his hands and knees, his famishment blurring into fear of losing a single drop.

 _Must I be deprived of the prize you shed unknowingly?_

And so he kissed as a proxy for a nibble.

Integra gave a little laugh.

It echoed in her bedroom, which was dark but for the moon outside her window. He met her gaze.

Nothing else could unravel him so thoroughly.

Her blue diamonds held a famishment rivaling his own.

"It seems you've caught me."

The shadows sang.

 _Integra, Integra, Integra, daca te-as prinde-ntr-o zi..._

Alucard brushed the last of his kiss into the hollow of her foot, and savored her erratic pulse before raising his head.

"Will you limp?"

"If you can come up with a good excuse," she said, a bit too breathlessly for it to sound the cavalier fashion she had intended.

He was barely retaining what was left of his sanity, and would have kissed her in places such that she would be unable to move at all, yet managed to parry. "Ah, so this is to be a clandestine affair? The truth that you are afraid to crush my kiss cannot suffice?" Then again, letting the butler have a heart attack would be much less fun than boggling his mind with insinuations.

Integra half-smiled. "You said there's an order to these things, but you've gone about it in the wrong way, Count. The capture is supposed to be the objective of a courtship, not its initiative."

His fingers titillated the spot he had kissed. "An inverse order, then. Suits the nature of our dance."

"So the capture first?"

"Of course," Alucard said. "It's only fair."

A glimmer of something—something like tragedy, something like heartbreak—appeared in Integra's eyes and suddenly, inexplicably she looked _old_. The moonlight rendered her hair silver and threw the contours of her face into pithy relief. When she spoke, there was a note of deep-seated weariness.

"I wonder what that will mean for our end."

His grip tightened though she stayed still, and tendrils of ink twisted up her ankle, mindlessly possessive. He growled. "End, my Master? Have you forgotten? You ordered me to never leave you."

The strange glimmer in her eyes sublimated into a kind of hysteria. _Lunacy_ , he thought. Integra laughed. Longer and louder and cruder than before. The laughter suspended the dark room between mirth and grief, while in the background lurked that bitter poison.

Regret.

And while Alucard could only suspect the source of her regret, he knew he wanted her to _stop_.

He let go of her foot to seize her wrists, pulling her toward the precarious edge of the bed. "I'm charmed you see the humor in our predicament," he said with forced levity, "yet must you be so tasteless? Cease this. You're making a fool of yourself."

She did not.

It seemed she could not help it, much like the tears she had shed mere days ago.

Was not the line between uncontrollable tears and uncontrollable laughter a fine one, truly? Both were the excess of emotions hoarded, often glasslike, shattered remains. He should know. _He should know_.

 _There is a man with blood on his mouth, his hands, his feet, watching the sun rise. It burns. Laughter escapes him long and loud and crude and regretful._

Alucard then let go of her wrists, to take her face in his gnarled fingers as though they could anchor her to this time and shook her, forcing her to look blearily into his red, red depths and there, she swallowed a breath.

"What has made you become me?" he whispered and Integra thought, finally, he was asking a worthy question.

xx

xx

What is death like?

Thirteen-year-old Integra asked this question with no other inflection than that of curiosity. The monster considered his young master. She was the picture of demureness with her ankles crossed, and she was polishing a pistol.

She had scored perfect tens that evening.

"Why don't you pull the trigger and find out?"

"Unfortunately, shooting myself on a whim tends to be a bit fatal," Integra said, and he cackled, black hair shaking like boughs.

" _My Master._ "

It was a compliment on its own. The girl tried not to focus on how that made her feel.

"You are not the first to ask this question, nor will you be the last. You humans and your fascination with death."

"But it's a very _human_ question, don't you agree?"

At his distinct lack of reply Integra gave herself a pat on the back.

When he did reply, it was toneless. "I was decapitated, Master. Not a very scenic lane." His eyes were perceiving the far horizon of a place she would not yet reach. "I briefly recall a darkness. A never-ending expanse of it. I wanted not to take root there, so I returned here."

"Was the darkness itself the destination?"

"How can I say? Nothing is certain, least of all death." He smirked. "Though it will be safe to assume that those whom I have devoured have found the great beyond to uncannily resemble a beast's belly."

Integra continued to polish her pistol.

The beast advanced. "Why, did you expect fanfares and cherubs?"

She considered taking aim. No, that would be counterproductive. She had discovered early on he gained perverse enjoyment from getting maimed. "Not for you, no."

"You don't mean you expect it for yourself? Cherubs are so _plebeian_."

" _You_ said it," Integra grumbled.

That was rather childish, she would scold herself later—though not as childish as the vampire who had instigated—but at that moment he was a wall of red before her chair. A part of Integra tensed, thinking he would stop, yet Alucard passed her by. He chose a spot under the moon.

He looks like he belongs there. An ancient. Suspended in space and effaced by time...

"Death is the end—so you humans expect it to be, believe it to be—yet here I am." Alucard spread his hands. "By the bargain of blood, but of course, death leaves its mark." Moonlight pooled in his palms. "We can deduce thus that the path to the beyond is less than straightforward. Perhaps one day you will feel the burn of your gun rather than its chill, my Master, and see what answer lies in wait for you."

"I don't see what my gun has to do with it," said Integra, "but in any case. It's only unfortunate that I won't be able to give you my impressions when that day comes, Alucard."

xx

xx

Death leaves its mark.

She, of course, did not answer. She did not wait for him to ask another vain question or to make a move.

She kissed him this time, too.

Gunmetal could not be so simultaneously cold and hot as these death-marked lips. Integra slipped past his stunned hands and craned her neck forward, gripping the mattress to prevent herself from falling. She kissed him hard, but she did not close her eyes, yet. They beheld that most carnal color. That dilated, blazing red.

She parted her lips, warmed his with her breaths, wanting them to follow suit so she could partake of his taste of copper and wine at last. "Will you make me do all the work, you fool?" she murmured.

The sound he made, that sent every nerve in her body trembling, was not human.

He moved.

 _At last! At last!_

Alucard moved and everything became fire.

There was anger but also desperation in the way he retaliated, in the way he seized the back of her head and crushed her mouth to his with such force that she was a few fingers shy of tottering off the edge, and she was sure she would bruise. He thrust. His serpentine tongue was heavy and grew warmer and slicker with each second he spent rubbing it against hers, bereaving her of air.

" _Integra_..."

Around them his shadows pulsated scarlet. Integra decided this was not enough. She pushed herself off the bed. Into his lap.

Her upper lip snagged on one of his many deadly teeth. Ironically it was the resulting blood that stilled him, even as his arms embraced her. Their chests heaved together. Her skirt had ridden up. Her thighs were splayed awkwardly and brushed near his groin.

All this pleased her very much.

Integra pulled back. She swept the tip of her tongue over the shallow cut and tasted her blood and their mixed saliva, and found it sweet.

Alucard's eyes were unhinged.

" _Countess_."

A thrill shot across her being. She knew he had felt it as well. Integra closed her eyes. Her hands rested on his shoulders. She touched her forehead to his and laid her entire weight upon it.

"Allow me to hypothesize," he said mildly, belying the bind of his claws which strangled her clothes. "Hypothetically, a girl went to sleep one night, none the wiser, drifting off in the arms of Morpheus so sweetly, so sweetly... Yet the images that he hailed for her must have been terrible and vivid, for when she awoke, it was as a woman, with war in her eyes."

The sibilance of his voice both soothed and stirred. _I would like to stipple these cheekbones with the red that coats my lips, but you're not to be deterred now, are you? My dear Count._

"These images had the power to undo the prudent regard in which she had held her servant, and on this night she bares herself to me," his third-person narration went downhill, "and ruins me."

"Not herself?"

"You have ruined me," Alucard said hoarsely, "and I require indemnity."

"Shall I ask for your hand in marriage?"

He did not take the bait, and she was not very surprised. With her eyes still closed and their foreheads pressed together, their limbs rustling against each other, his voice seemed to come from the beyond.

"Were you my Countess?"

Integra licked her lips once more. The blood had crusted over the swollen flesh. Her lashes fluttered open a bit stiffly due to the wateriness her laughter earlier had brought about, and she was back to admiring the chaos in her Count's gaze.

"I call you Count, do I not?"

There was a clock in her room, she thought, that ticked loudly when everything else was silent. It was ticking quite loudly right now.

His chaotic gaze flicked to the door. Integra managed not to jump when seconds later, a shadow appeared in the crack of light under her door. "My lady. Your dinner."

"A moment—ah—" Whatever shite excuse she had been meaning to make was thwarted when Alucard wound his arms around her even tighter. He slanted his head and started to kiss her jaw.

Integra tugged at his gleeful hair over his shoulder. "Quit!" she hissed.

He emitted an ominously perceptible chuckle.

"My lady! May I enter? What was that noise?"

Integra yanked hard. "Nothing!" Her reprimand had no bearing on his ministrations whatsoever and Alucard kissed her more boldly, one of his hands sliding up and tangling in her own hair while he sucked sensitive spots down her neck and along her clavicles. When had he undone her buttons? "I'm not—decent and—" She could feel the smugness radiating from him, the insufferable monster!

Said monster's mouth found her ear briefly. " _Not decent_ ," it mocked. "Forsooth, the best lie is the truth."

"I'm not hungry," Integra gritted out. "I'll—see you in the morning—"

The shadow under her door was worryingly still. Did he suspect something? She would not put it past her butler.

 _And what if he does?_ Old Integra snorted. _What if he walks in on you baring your neck to the beast you were born to kill? Comeuppance._

No. She resisted the haze of arousal. Alucard's legion was surrounding the solitary shadow like a pack of hounds raising their hackles at unwelcome company. She tried again. "Good night, Walter."

At length, the shadow made a move, presumably a bow.

"...Good night, my lady."

Subsequent to the dismissal Integra felt doused in ice and no longer as eager to kiss. Alucard sensed this; his efforts grew more urgent. " _Countess, Countess, Countess..._ "

"Stop."

He snarled against her throat.

"This is what you get for pulling that stunt," she told him coldly. "Release me."

She had been pressed into him for an inordinate amount of time. When he obeyed, his lips thinned into an angry line, she was left wanting. Not that she let it show. Integra seated herself back on her bed and watched the legion of shadows, the wraiths that had nigh encompassed her room return to their crevices. There was the moon, and Alucard. He looked starved anew.

"You smell of blood," he moaned. "You smell of _me_."

Integra straightened her blouse.

"I would not have compromised you. I would not dare…to let _anyone_...see you as I do." He reached out to take her foot. "Countess—"

She stood and went to her vanity, where the coat lay. "You forgot to conclude your hypothesis, Alucard. And it needs a reliable source."

Alucard eyed her intently.

 _A kiss, a kiss and then what?_

The truth, or what mirrors it.

Integra checked her reflection. Hair mussed. Cheeks flushed and eyes bright behind glasses, and lips tender. It was a stranger she saw—but on second thought, not a stranger at all. It was simply... _new_ Integra, she supposed, and new Integra wore her kisses well, despite the fact that the one who had given them was a git. Picking up a comb, she casually ran it through and observed him grow restless in the background of the frame.

"Hypothetically, there was a Countess," she began. "There was a war. And the Count, he had come to her with a gift."

He smiled. "Ah, so I did bring that war to you."

Yet before he could gloat, she set her comb down.

"The Countess won the war, but lost her Count."

He lost his smile.

"He left her on the battlefield."

The moonlight was wintry, and it was Alucard who rivaled it.

His response was to laugh hysterically.

"My dear Master is still quite the maiden, to have let such an absurd illusion affect her so. A fine vindictive form indeed." He stopped shaking and glared at her through a writhing web of black locks. "I am insulted. _This_ is the grand reveal? Your night terror was _this?"_

Integra did not begrudge him his laugh. It was just what she would have expected of him.

" _Leave you_ ," Alucard spat, "when I cannot. When you know I cannot, when you know I cannot be defeated."

When a knowledge of something you have held to be indisputable is shattered in front of your eyes, and the methods you have used for years prove faulty, it yields a deep and permanent scar. The coat was pulled from the vanity to hide her clenching fists.

"Pray tell, Countess... _when_ was it...that this war took place?"

"You certainly aren't wasting a minute calling me that," Integra derided. "I know what you'll say. _It's only fair_. But since I am cruel, I don't want to make this easy for you."

His expression immediately turned wary.

"We have here a dream, a kiss, titles not in use and my—obvious— _fondness_ for you—and yours for me." She regarded the red coat. "And we may have gone about this in an inverse order, as you put it. That, however, excuses nothing. Don't you think I deserve better?"

She turned, and there he was in front of her.

"I don't insinuate otherwise."

Integra stared at him for a long, long while. "Maybe you don't," she said finally. "You never do seem to mean it, when your carelessness invites a mess that is mine to clean up. It's simply who you are."

A monster with no consequences. And so in the end, even the things important to you become nothing but a game.

"But when you degrade this intimacy I have allowed, _for the both of us_ , as something to be put on display, and flaunted—to Walter, no less—well." Her quiet was his disquiet. "I shouldn't have to feel—don't deserve to feel—like I'm a chess piece between you two a second time."

"And when was the first?"

Her quiet broke.

"Are you speaking of the scene mere days ago, or another fragment of your dream? In fact," Alucard's words came out visceral, "are you truly angry at me, or at the Count who abandoned you?"

She looked at him almost pityingly.

"They're one and the same. Either way, you end up disappointing me."

She could have taken a stake and tore it through his sinews, and it would have been more merciful.

Integra shoved the coat into his chest, returning it to him once again and a final time. "If you want answers, Alucard, earn them. If you want to call me your Countess, prove yourself worthy. Until then, you are not to call me by that title, and I will not call you by yours."

Master. _Integra._

She smelled of blood. She smelled of him. She wore his kisses.

 _His._

She was his—yet not his.

Countess, yet not Countess.

The coat contorted in his grasp. "No matter," Alucard said softly in contrast. "I shall do as you desire. Who knows, I might just bring a war to you as a dowry. Just to show you."

Luna illuminated them both, cold and merciless.

"Anything but that."

xx

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something

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wicked

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this

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way

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comes

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The forest in summer was draped in bolts of lethargy as well as energy, and it was this paradox that made it a site of old wives' tales. Do not linger when the fog rolls in, they said. It will cling to the leaves and branches. It is very easy to get lost, and very easy to get stuck.

Look! A hiker.

(Our victim.)

He saw light beyond the fog and was glad, believing he was out of the woods at last. He was disheartened, to say the least, when upon closer examination he realized he had found not an electric signboard that marked the end of the trail, but an old shack, with a single source of light inside.

Perhaps it was lucky he had chanced upon a place to stay until the night passed and the fog lifted. It was ambiguous, however, as to whether the shack was occupied. He rapped on the door. "Hello? Anyone?"

It opened. Too easily.

Weird. But falling victim to human curiosity, he entered anyway.

The light was not a lamp.

The light was not even the moon, reflecting off the surface.

Under the moon, the fog seemed to glow. It clung to the leaves and the branches and hung, like a web.

It was very easy to get lost, very easy to get stuck and, alas, very easy to get eaten.

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* * *

NOTES

Hello! Hello! I hope I find you well on this summer day. I know, I know, I've been terrible. But some things could not be helped, and I had to take the long way to deliver this chapter. Which _unofficially_ marks the _unofficial_ first section of this story. I don't divide them, exactly, but after this chapter we will pick up the pace, so to speak, and get into the nitty-gritty of Integra's situation, find out what's up with the other characters, blow up some skulls, and produce tears—among other things.

I know you have questions, especially concerning the end road this story will take. (Which will take a long time getting to!) This is all I can provide at this point (and some of you will have already read this): I have dropped Hints About The Future Plot. Countless times. Of course, they are never obvious. A word here, a sentence there. You won't know and I've made sure you won't. I don't even think they're worthy to be called hints, they're so insignificant. Nonetheless, they're there. As little, fleeting whimsies.

I think I'll put up a nice little one shot before I upload the next chapter. Thank you always, always for your patience, your interest and your wonderful support.


	14. phantom ache

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That spring morning, she was at her desk, turning a page in the ledger when Seras barged in with a bunch of daisies buoyed up by her shadow arm. Integra glanced up only once. She asked, "Is Mr. Thistlethwaite dead?"

"What? No!"

"Who died and made you the gardener, then?"

"You can be so morbid," Seras groused. It was hard to take offense when her hair looked the part of a vegetation. "It's weeding day, and Mr. Thistlethwaite was trying to get rid of all the daisies again! Can you believe it? It's an outrage, Master Integra! Here, see? I rescued the lot."

Mr. Thistlethwaite, the gardener, was a true Hellsing employee. He took pest control very seriously. It was just that his understanding of pest included daisies, dandelions and other innocent perennials, to Seras' aggrievement.

"Good for you," Integra drawled. "And I'm sure you're aware that as soon as they're off their roots they're as good as dead?"

"Er." A beat. "Let me put them in a vase," said Seras, who was probably doing herself a favor by not being a gardener.

Integra sat back, her solitary eye arching with amusement and fondness at Seras' endeavor to arrange the "rescued" flowers somewhat presentably, as though it was the precise sort of thing a Draculina should be doing in the hours before noon. She tossed the ledger aside and listened to the pick of the day. _Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds._

"... _with the sun in her eyes and she's gone..._ Hmm. Is this the right amount of water? I'm not sure..."

"I don't know why you bother. They're not going anywhere."

There had always been daisies in the lawns of Hellsing Manor.

"You could pull them up by the roots every week of the year and they'll still come back. They love it here." Integra curled her lips. "Too many dead under the soil."

"Uh-huh," Seras said. She was turning the vase this way and that, seeking out the best angle. Satisfied, she put her hands on her waist. "Isn't this nice?"

"Pièce de résistance! _Makes the office much livelier_."

"My office is not supposed to be lively," Integra deadpanned.

"Resistance. I like that." Seras nodded. "I like that they'll grow back, no matter what."

Integra suppressed a sigh, and threw the French walls a glare, which seemed to be rippling at her expense (she missed when they were sensible, no-nonsense English walls). The daisies flopped over the rim of a blue vase in a square patch of light. Bright and small and clustered, a spot of whimsy in the otherwise spartan room.

"Like little bits of hope."

Seras and Pip went on with their natter. Integra, silver mane falling to one side, let herself meander along it for a while, until her heart did not feel so heavy. "Seras," she said, getting up, "come here."

"Yes, Master?"

She leaned on her desk and pointed to her chair. "Sit."

"Uh." Seras looked at the chair and then at Integra. "No."

Integra rolled her eye and pushed her into the seat by the shoulders, ignoring her squawk. "I won't have the captain of my troops take after the plum fairy." She opened a drawer and fished out a comb.

Seras smiled sheepishly. Her red eyes rounded when a hand cupped her face, and the other began combing the daisies out of her hair. _As yellow as the sun and stubborn as the skull underneath_ , Pip had once described it.

A minute passed in silence. Seras touched the ends of her master's own hair.

"I wish I could grow mine long."

"Why don't you?" Integra asked, attempting to picture Seras with long hair and finding it plain wrong.

"Mine grows all over the place! And I don't want to spend the rest of my life ironing it." She blinked. "Unlife."

"All over the place," Integra chuckled, "like your daisies?"

Seras puffed up her cheeks. "Now you're just teasing me."

The displaced petals flitted in the air above the checkerboard floor. The vampire made a contented sound. Integra maneuvered the comb through the stubborn hair a final run and, flipping it over, she knocked Seras on the forehead lightly with its spine.

A shadowy appendage rubbed at the spot. "Master!"

"Picking a fight with the gardener first thing in the morning. Making a florist's shop out of my office. Glad to see you have your priorities straight."

"But it is. I mean, they are. Well, not exactly." Seras beamed, fangs winking cheekily. "Making you smile, that's my priority."

"Saccharine words."

"So why don't you smile and admit that you _love_ my pièce de résistance and it is, in fact, _the_ showpiece of your office?"

"That's what pièce de résistance literally means, you silly girl," Integra scoffed.

But she smiled.

Mission accomplished, Seras bounded from the chair and pirouetted away. "Come on, Master! Making sure you eat properly is another priority and I can smell the muffins."

Integra moved with less fuss. "How rambunctious you are today. I wonder if there was too much sugar in your last blo—"

The comb dropped.

She gripped the back of the chair.

"Integra?"

"Nothing." She breathed. "Just a bit out of balance."

xx

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 **13.**

 **phantom ache**

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Thus it ended up that the only person to rise from a good night's sleep was Seras, who sprang out of bed at once. Her hair resembled a haystack and her toes itched, yet her smile was as bright as the sun.

Integra loved her.

Her! Unlucky little Seras Victoria.

Loved her _best_.

Seras had been unable to say anything. She remembered stumbling after her, dazed, and somehow finding a patch of grass to sit on, where she watched the lady pluck a daisy and hold it up to the light. She remembered then wondering if it could be possible at all for her heart to burst, simply burst with happiness. Seras had not asked silly questions. Integra had made it clear that she meant what she said, and what she said must be a special kind of truth—it did not have to make sense, it just _was_.

There was the posy of daisies she had picked for her, on the windowsill. It was in fact the second batch Integra had picked. The first batch of daisies had been resting on her lap, spotting her blue skirt with dew. "I'm afraid I have no talent for weaving them," she sighed. "They're prone to break apart in my hands."

Seras had taken them. And the second time Integra turned to her, she shyly held out a lace of those delicate white flowers, gleaming under the moon like stars. She would have wrapped it around Integra's wrist but she kept it cradled in her palm.

"How pretty, Seras." A fingertip traced the petals. "Just as I said. You're better than any of us."

Integra had said that? When?

She had been too busy blushing to speak.

The posy on the windowsill looked dry. Seras gathered it to her chest and left her room to find a vase.

The trees on the periphery of the manor formed a tortuous path against the sky. Seras followed it with her eyes as she walked down the second floor corridor, where the curtains had already been drawn. The smell of muffins wafted up from below. It was going to be a beautiful day and the girl could not help but put a bounce in her step. This was her— _Say it!_ —her _home,_ and each new day here seemed to promise more than the last.

What tomorrow would bring? And the next day, and the next—

 _Whoosh_.

Huh?

Seras' bouncy steps dwindled to a halt. She stared out the row of windows.

She could have sworn she saw something large and black run past.

The view through the glass, however, remained picturesque. Seras shook her head and reached the main staircase when, unmistakably this time, a very large, pitch black shape did emerge from the trees.

It lumbered toward the house. The closer it got, the clearer she could see, its maw matted and stained dark. _Is that...?_ Seras was so startled, it was belatedly that she named the creature. It was a dog.

 _Isn't it?_

The dog suddenly surged toward the entrance, and she yelled out a panicked "Hey!" as it slammed open the doors of the entrance hall and let itself in. It paid no heed to her whatsoever and tore through an opposite corridor, prompting Seras to race down the stairs after it without thinking. Or perhaps thinking too strongly about one thing.

 _Its eyes were red!_

The corridor was deserted. There was not any hint that a dog had trespassed. Yet there was a door at its end that she knew led to the sitting room, ajar. Her fingers tensed around the daisies as she approached and peered inside.

There was not a dog, but a man.

He sat sprawled in a chaise longue, head lolling on a shoulder. Seras had hardly made a sound but he looked up. He was wearing tinted glasses. A gloved hand was stroking a rather disheveled red coat in his lap.

Seras recognized this man. He was the one who had come for Integra at the orphanage.

"Don't skulk about. Unless you're a mouse?"

She opened the door wider yet said nothing.

"Ah. The new girl." The man said this with less enthusiasm than he would have had for an actual mouse. "Sneaking into rooms as well as lives."

She stood her ground. "I'm looking for a dog."

"A dog?"

"It came this way."

"Did he?"

Seras missed the pronoun.

"As you can see, there is no dog here. Or there is, but you wouldn't know, would you?" He smiled oddly.

Everything about this encounter was odd, yet it was most peculiar that he would wear such glasses indoors, especially here. No one had bothered to draw the curtains here, it seemed. And the man was not getting up any time soon. He lost interest in her silence and resumed stroking the coat, which was noticeably smaller than his frame.

"She gave it back to you," Seras wondered out loud, her surprise overcoming her caution. "The coat."

His smile faded.

"But..." She faltered. Was it even the same coat? How could it change sizes?

"You shouldn't trust all that is in front of you, little mouse. Now, shoo."

"Mister, _is_ there a dog here? In this house?" Seras was not leaving without answers. "I remember Integra saying something about—"

"There are many things in this house," he cut her off, voice flat, "which appear as one when in truth they are the other."

"Then who are you supposed to be? Integra said you work for her, but what do you do?"

The man laughed. "I?"

Seras, of course, could not catch the subtle shift in his eyes. They were wide and mad—and yet, in a blink, curiously fragile.

"I am anything she desires me to be."

 _A knight, a dog, a..._

Alucard was no longer aware of his audience. His digits dug into crimson fabric, desiring for themselves slopes of dark skin heated and trembling with shallow breaths, and finding none.

"I cater to her every whim. If she would want the world, I will give."

He pried away from the futile search and glanced upward. She was coming.

Seras stared. It was the most peculiar answer she had gotten, ever.

"You sound like you love her."

He snapped his neck toward her so quickly that Seras balked, tripping over the threshold and landing in a heap of white debris on the floor. She squeaked and scrambled to rescue the flowers. "Oh, oh no—"

"Seras?"

"I—uh—"

She was brusquely pulled upright just as Integra rounded the corner.

"Seras?" Integra stilled when she saw who it was behind her. "Alucard. What happened?"

He said nothing, eyes feasting on her face.

"Er—" Seras fidgeted between the two of them. For some reason the air was stuffy all of a sudden. "He helped me up!" she said in earnest, and Integra tilted her head at her.

"Alucard helped you up?"

"I tripped, and Mister Alucard was in the room and," Seras was getting confused, "first I was chasing after a dog—"

"A dog," Integra intoned.

"There was! It ran this way, but then it disappeared…"

"I don't doubt you, Seras," Integra reassured her. "I only inquire if _Alucard_ happened to see this dog." This was thrown scathingly at the dog in question.

He remained silent.

"Well, no..." Seras squinted. "Integra, there's a scab on your lip."

Instinctively, the older girl ran her tongue over the spot. It neither ached nor tasted of blood and saliva, yet she flinched nonetheless—its lack teased her want. And there across the few steps of distance between them, punctuated by stray daisy petals, she felt _his_ desire flare, the wildfire that his ridiculous shades could not contain.

Really. _At a time and place like this._

"Is it very hot out here?" Seras in the middle piped up, utterly confounded and oblivious.

Integra ushered her back in. "It must have been when I fell out of bed," she said of her scab, straight-faced and completely aware of the man trailing at their heels whose desire bristled against hers, electrostatic. Her dress was white today. It would be inked if she touched him, was her fleeting thought.

The child went bug-eyed. "You did?" she exclaimed, finding the possibility that a lady like Integra could fall off her bed incredible.

Integra merely smiled.

The shadows curled discreetly beneath her feet, mimicking a kiss.

Alucard returned to his levity on the chaise longue while Integra strode to the opposite side of the room. She took a pitcher from the table there and gave it to Seras, who accepted it not without bewilderment.

"You want it for your posy, don't you?"

"Oh!" Seras marveled and was prompt to nestle the sorry state of the daisies in it. "You knew! You know everything, Integra!"

"Why else would you be carrying those poor things around?" Integra said, and sobered.

The pitcher was blue.

"Happy now, my darling?"

She could _feel_ Alucard's gaze puncturing her.

Seras nodded, and chirped in surprise when Integra threaded her fingers through her hair, tucking the cheery mess behind an ear. The child clutched at the hand that cared for her so tenderly, of the one person who would tell her the truth. "Integra, is there a dog in the manor?" She whispered this because she was sure, somehow, that the strange man with the strange name studying them with strange eyes had a great deal to do with the very strange dog with the _very_ strange eyes.

And Integra answered, "Yes." Her countenance changed not a bit. "There is, and he can eat a man whole."

 _There were things..._

Seras' heart was an uneven pit-a-pat. "That isn't normal, is it?"

"No," Integra agreed. "Are you afraid?"

There were things the people in the manor spoke of in hushed tones.

They were things that were quite odd.

But Integra was not afraid, Seras realized. She had no reason to be afraid. She was the lady of this house and the boss of every oddity within, and that included the dog and the shrinking coat.

And that man in the long chair who probably loved her.

"I'm not afraid if you're not," Seras said. "I won't be afraid of anything here, because you're here and—" She tugged at Integra's hand until her head was level with hers and whispered the softest she could muster. "I won't be surprised anymore if I notice things that aren't—normal. It's like a fairy tale, right?"

From across the room and out of nowhere the man let out a chuckle.

Blue, blue, was the color of the pitcher, and blue were Seras' eyes, the color of innocence persisting in this bleak world. "Yes," Integra said. "Like the strangest fairy tale."

It ached.

Her heart, yes, but she was used to that. It was the phantom ache in her left orbit—oh, it had never ached this much. Even with the bullet lodged in it she had felt nothing. Yet the eyeball throbbing there was not meant to be, and it was reminding her of that fact viciously.

"You'll want water for those." Integra kept the infliction out of her voice. "Go on, Seras. I'll be along soon."

"Okay," Seras said, but her feet did not budge. "Integra? Are you—"

"Run along, little mouse." Alucard was there and neither of them had seen him move. "You don't need to be told twice."

Seras frowned at him. "You're not very nice," she muttered, before hugging the pitcher close and scurrying off.

She turned back once, just beyond the threshold. She saw the man remove his tinted glasses, when the door shut on her nose, and there had not been any wind.

xx

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"Master. Let me tend to you," Alucard crooned as soon as the child was out of sight. He banished his glasses and pressed his fingers into the small of her back, guiding her to the nearest seat. Integra went with an acquiescence that was unsettling and lowered herself with burden, the left side of her face creased. He thumbed away a strand of pale hair.

She grabbed hold of his hand and plastered it to her eye. He watched fervently as her fingers slid into his spaces. She huffed, and the air tickled his chest. "What were you thinking?"

"I?" he asked, feigning ignorance.

"The dog that wasn't there?" Integra gibed. "What were you thinking when you took that form?"

"You," he answered.

Truth danced bare in his flames.

"I have been thinking about you and how I must prove I am worthy to call you Countess, _my_ Countess _._ But I am a _dog_." The velvet voice became a growl. "A beast, and a beast does not like to be caged in his thoughts. I ran on all fours and begged lunacy to tear me asunder, but no, I could not—escape—you."

She was limp in the cradle of their entwined hands. "Promises, promises."

Alucard leaned in, his hair hiding their intimacy away from the rest of the world. "Am I so reprehensible?"

"Would I be touching you if you were?"

"Master, you're using me as ice," he said, half-jesting and half-serious. "Which I would do a better job of, if you would remove my glove."

Her visible eye was shrewd, and he gained the distinct feeling he had put the proverbial foot in his mouth.

"You don't say."

She was almost dispassionate.

Their interlocked digits were dragged, clinically, down the slope of her cheekbone, her jaw, to the cushion of her lips. At their moist warmth, his teeth clattered shut, and at the same time Integra bit.

She pulled his glove off as delicately as she would an apple peel. Her blunt, human incisors grazed his flesh with the fabric their barrier, unbound him inch by inch at an indolent pace. A century. It had been a century since his hand had been freed. _Countess!_ his wraiths cried, out of spite and defiance and worship— _Your rightful title, and which you have denied me after allowing a taste, an irrevocable taste._

Finally, she removed the entire glove. It tumbled into her lap, teeth-marked. "There." Her breath dampened his naked fingertips but Integra was all business. She yanked his hand back to its post. "This _is_ better, well done."

"Ah." How could he argue with that?

"Now." She buried her face in his palm. "Hush."

Alucard could only obey, galled and voracious, sinking to his knees as a worshipper was wont to do and canonizing her repose. _Isn't this that fairy tale with the poisoned apple?_ He considered the dwarves of that tale—one of them, keeping guard over the glazed coffin, keeping guard over their _prin_ _ţ_ _es_ _ă_ , never to touch yet content to watch her sleep, eternally... Until death comes in the guise of a prince.

And who is who in this?

(You sound like you love her.)

 _"I am reduced to a thing that wants Integra."_

He had pillowed his chin on her knee, his mane spilling into the snowscape of her dress, intending for this letter to reach her within her shallow tide-pool of a slumber. Her muscles twitched. A sliver of steel pinned him in place.

 _"I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night and it has all gone: I just miss you—"_

 _"—in a quite simple desperate human way."_

She picked up the prose, her thumb caressing his knuckles in that desperate human way. _"I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal."_

It was no longer Vita's letter to her Virginia, nor the monster's to his master.

 _"Damn you, spoilt creature. I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this."_ Her words were quiet but vexed, yet steadfast all the same. _"I can't be clever and stand-offish with you."_

"Integra."

"Do you know why?" Integra asked.

She was not going to recite the rest of the prose. She would make him writhe in unmet anticipation. Alucard wanted her, wanted her unspoken phrase; wanted to touch her even as he was touching her, wanted her succulent heart as though he had never wanted anything else. Oh, but what did that matter now?

 _"Too truly,"_ he replied, throat parched.

Integra raised her head.

Her left eye was closed, yet when she opened it something fell out. It landed on his palm which she still held, and burst. It might have echoed in the silence.

Alucard straightened his spine in an instant.

There, oozing into the lines of his palm and speckling her white dress, was a drop of blood.

xx

xx

I love you too much for that.

xx

xx

xx

xx

* * *

Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, 1926.

Oh, damn, I'm late, I'm late, I'm so late—*looks down at nonexistent wristwatch* *is pointless* *chucks it away*—terribly sorry. And this is far from the longest chapter ever. But it's Halloween, and I had to put this up _somehow_ or I'd be on it after yet another month and sobbing. May this offering appease the spirits, the Great Pumpkin—and you!

Some of you may already know that I have a new job, and while it is much better than my last job, it is very demanding and saps a lot of my free time. I certainly can't promise how long it will be till I can post the next chapter. But it's going to get there, alright? Slowly, but it's getting there. And this chapter may be the most significant yet, but you won't know that till it gets there, will you? *winks* Until next time, darlings!


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